Tribute 9
by DomWeasel
Summary: Just a forgotten Games before Katniss' rebellion (Yeah, I'm aware I use British turns of phrase)
1. Chapter 1

Death was inevitable. Everything that had ever lived had died and everything that would ever live would die. When it came wasn't something you got to choose, it might be sickness, hunger, a mill accident or the day when your body simply ceased to function anymore. For some, getting old was the best way to go. For others, getting old was just burdening your family. Death was inevitable; I took comfort in that. Accepting that made it far less frightening.

Death was the whole purpose of the Games. The Capitol let the Districts kill each other because it was smarter than killing us themselves and uniting all the Districts with hate for the Capitol. It was hard to keep in mind that it was actually the Capitol responsible for you being in an arena hellhole when you were facing two dozen people who wanted to kill you, even if they only wanted you dead because it meant they could live. The only time we ever saw people from other Districts was on the screen, killing our people. When you saw a six foot four, hundred and eighty pound, eighteen year old Career sword-wielding tribute from District 2 gleefully disembowelling a twelve year old from your District, how could you not think of them as the enemy?

Everyone hated the Careers. They were the ones who went into the Games willingly, eagerly. They were hungry to kill for the first time, at least I hoped they were. There were rumours from time to time that the illicit training District 1, 2 and 4 received included actually killing.

The metal plate began to ascend and I closed my eyes. Above me the cylinder opened and light hit my eyelids and I waited until the plate stopped moving before opening them. I had been expecting scorching sands or barren rock but instead there was simple, short green grass. There was a pleasant breeze as well, cooling and comforting after the cylinder.

A tremble shook my left knee for a moment. I was actually here, in an arena, for real.

There was a blue pack close by. In the Cornucopia there was an arsenal but all I was interested in was that blue pack. Death may have been inevitable but I didn't want to go down in the bloodbath, faceless and forgotten. I might have ignored Ellis but he had been adamant about setting your sights on a pack at the Cornucopia, getting it and getting it out. I wondered about his Games that had made him so firm about avoiding the Bloodbath.

I could see the terror in female 7 to my right and a steely resolve in female 3 to my left. 3 was all of thirteen years old and yet seemed more confident than 7 who was sixteen. I wondered how I looked. I hoped I looked serene. That would confuse them in the Capitol. I hadn't stood out. I hadn't taken part in anything, I had to be in the Games but that didn't mean I had to take part in the pageantry. Ellis had given up on me, focusing all his attention on June. I could see her from here. I hoped I didn't see her again. June and I barely knew each other but I definitely didn't want to be the one who killed her. I didn't think that I even had it in me to do so. How did you kill someone who asked you if you had slept well only hours earlier?

The gong sounded and I sprinted without a thought, aware of the movement either side of me. My eyes swept over everything and as I reached the blue pack that was the centre of my attention and snatched it up, I saw F3 shoot past. Whatever she was going for, she was willing to risk her life for, plunging deep into the bounty surrounding the Cornucopia. As I turned to flee, I saw M1 and M2 busy gutting M8 with F2 and F4 covering them and threatening anyone else who might dare try and take anything from their trove. The Careers had planned their alliance ahead, right from the first day in the Training Centre. In seconds they would have all the weapons and would kill everyone they could. F12 went down with a knife in the throat as she tried to flee with a red pack of her own, like the one I had.

I ran with my one item, fleeing literally for my life, into the woods and I wasn't prepared for how that actually felt, knowing I could be cut down from behind by a spear or throwing knife. The moment I was out of the open, I felt myself relax. I had spent my life in the mills and open space wasn't something I was used to so the confines of the trees soothed the terror that had sprung suddenly as I had run.

I hit something warm and soft, something that gave way under me. I shoved myself back up and looked into the eyes of F11, fifteen years old and flaxen haired, empty handed. I stood and she remained on the ground, frozen in terror. What was I supposed to do? Kick her to death? I ran, leaving her there.

Death was inevitable.

[[][]][][]

The pack contained a sleeping bag which was brilliant. There were some crackers, salted, as Ellis had warned they would be. It was a Gamemakers joke to provide sustenance that made you thirsty. There were some strips of dried meat which was better. There was a canteen, empty. Full canteens would have been found further in, much further. I had no water but I did have iodine, to make any water I found drinkable. There was also a packet of matches though I definitely wouldn't be stupid enough to start a fire. For some reason there was a coil of wire. Ellis had called this standard when he had telling us we should grab a pack and run. We were fortunate, he had warned we might be thrown into an arena with no supplies whatsoever. I had been scared of a desert or mountain and instead I was here in the woods.

I stopped running and walked, marvelling at the feel of being surrounded on all sides by trees. The instructors had done their best to try and instruct me about… nature. It hadn't really taken. I understood machines, not greenery.

But I did know that you had to go downhill to find water. I was now going uphill. I wanted to put as much space between myself and the Careers as possible but it seemed I had to stay close. I hoped it was true that the closer you were to danger, the further you were from harm.

I wandered on through the trees. The first time in my life when I had been free and I was going to die. I wondered how large the arena was. Big arenas were rare; keeping us close to one another ensured more action, something to keep the audience interested. A big arena meant more time for me to enjoy the freedom of open space.

It was night by the time I reached level ground and found to my surprise, a river. A whole river. The river at home was a slow wide thing. This river was fast and narrow. I had often wondered about the arenas, whether there was just one and they changed the interior of it or if they built new arenas every Games. I filled my canteen, adding a few drops of the iodine.

Night came on cool. My outfit was decent and the hood kept the chill off my ears and I had the sleeping bag. I just needed to find somewhere to sleep. The first night the Careers always went hunting, trying to eliminate as many tributes as possible before they could scatter and go to ground. Combined with the bloodbath at the Cornucopia, half of the tributes always died on the first day and night.

Eventually and with the light about gone, I found a nook to sleep in. It was not a cave, it was a nook. It was a tiny spot I could curl up in and unless someone happened to step right by, I wouldn't be found in the night.

I ate a couple of crackers and a strip of beef, enough to take the edge off. They called them the Hunger Games though few of us were strangers to hunger. The Careers, they were the ones who would feel the hunger, if they didn't enjoy the stockpile of supplies.

The anthem I had always found oddly provocative. It was a powerful tune. I liked it but also hated it because of what came next. Up in the sky appeared the face of M3 followed by M4. That was a surprise, usually all the Careers survived the first day. Someone must have gotten in a lucky hit. F5 was down, F6, both from 7, M8, M10, both from 11 and both from 12. 11 and 12 rarely made it.

Twelve of us left. June was out there somewhere. Little F3 was still going. F7 had bought it. There were five Careers to watch out for. Five Careers… I wondered how smart it was to have half of your competitors die on the first day. Five boys, seven girls remaining. Often enough there were more girls than boys at the end of the first day, the boys considered each other greater threats so they killed one another while the girls got away.

I had scored a five. Aside from the Careers, most of the high scores had died today. Being a nobody, I hadn't been anyone's priority. Had one of the Careers been chasing me and gutted the flaxen haired girl from 11 I had knocked down, giving me a chance to get away? If so, I was already responsible for a death. Perhaps she had gotten a little further.

Five Careers to worry about.


	2. Chapter 2

I had another strip of beef in the morning and knew where I was headed. While I had slept my brain had been thinking things over it seemed. It was suicidal but what else could I do? I couldn't live out here. I knew where I could find food and I knew the Careers would be out looking for blood today. By now they would have stockpiled everything, probably using the Cornucopia as a base. If I wanted to eat, I had to raid that base. If I died, I would die doing something at least.

I smeared mud on my face, on the red stripes on my clothes and added a little to darken my pack. Maybe it would make me less visible, maybe if anyone was watching me, they would think I knew what I was doing.

The woods were quiet though whether because I was scaring everything silent or because there was nothing in them I didn't know. I wondered how much food was all around me. At least I wouldn't eat something that would kill me. It was sad way to go in the arena, killed by some toxic plant. I wondered why the Capitol included them. Perhaps just to make us suffer. To scare us. There were traps out here I knew, ways for the Gamemakers to attack single tributes if things got dull. Throwing a few fireballs or causing an avalanche, dropping a tree even… it was all good fun…

Near midday I reached the Cornucopia as a cannon sounded. Someone else was down and the five Careers had left M2 behind to guard their supplies. He sported a bandage around his left leg and judging by the way that leg was outstretched, he wasn't going to be going anywhere fast. He was however utterly huge. Careers were volunteers, they trained for the arena; they took every advantage they could and entering the arena as eighteen year olds gave them a huge advantage over the tributes from other Districts who might be as young as twelve. A twelve year old could swing a sword and barely scratch an eighteen year old while an eighteen year old armed with the same weapon and with years of training behind them could sever whole limbs. I had seen it happen.

He was between me and food. I had no weapon while he could choose between swords, spears, axes, knives… He had a spear at the moment, something with reach so he could keep people away from his injured leg I guessed. I listened and heard nothing out there but birdsong.

He had an excellent view of the open space but not his back. If I came up around behind the Cornucopia, he wouldn't see me coming. If I could surprise him, I could kill him. It was the only way I could kill him. A fair fight ended in my death, my inevitable death. I didn't know how I would do it yet but at the moment, I had to just get around him.

I hoped the mud kept me camouflaged as I trekked around the woodline, keeping one eye on M2 and the other looking for other danger. I could just see myself blundering into the whole returning Career pack. That would be a way to die; cut to pieces by four huge Careers. It would make the highlights reel.

From the moment my name had been called in the Reaping, I had wondered if when it came to it, I really could kill someone. In self-defence, I thought I could do it. I took my canteen and drank a little water, feeling queasy as I contemplated killing someone, even a Career, in a sneak attack.

All too soon I found myself behind the Cornucopia and there seemed to be absolutely nothing else going on out there. Perhaps someone else was watching M2. I referred to them all that way because it stopped them being human. Learning their names when we had trained together, that would have just made things a thousand times worse. Sex and a number, that wasn't a human.

The thought came to me that I did have a weapon. I could have found a stick and tried to use it as a club but what I had was wire. I remembered a Games where one tribute had killed three others in brutal silent attacks three nights in a row. He had been bigger than me though he had seemed psychotic from the off.

Was I psychotic for concealing my pack under some ferns and coiling wire in my hands? Or was I being smart? Was I using what little I had to my advantage?

I stepped slowly though if my feet were making any sound, it was drowned out by my heart pounding in my ears. They hadn't offered training in this. Were they watching me right now? Was the whole nation watching with bated breath, waiting to see if M2 heard me and killed me with one vicious thrust? Did he know I was there and simply waiting for me to get within range? My steps became smaller and smaller the closer I came to him, his back seemingly growing larger and larger beyond all reason. He was humming, bored with sitting and watching. Perhaps he was thinking about his chances, thinking about what would happen when the others came back, wondering how long their alliance would last. Career alliances always ended explosively, the tension finally snapping and a melee usually breaking out.

They never ended like this. Never ended with some taking twenty seconds to every step and steeling themselves for what they had to do. Had to do… Kill or be killed. Death was inevitable. I crossed the loop of wire and held it. Inevitable.

Sulla gagged as my wire wrapped around his throat and I pulled hard, the wire cutting into my hands. He dropped his spear as he grasped at his throat, losing all sense as he reached for what was choking him. The pair of us hit the dirt, falling on his bad leg and a muted scream cutting through his choking. I held him, pulling, keeping it tight. Sulla was much bigger than me but as the wire cut into his neck, all his size and strength meant nothing. His elbow slammed into my ribs, once, twice, thrice. It didn't matter because the wire was too tight and every attempt to shake me free simply tightened it. Sulla hit me again, more weakly. Again. Weaker. Again. Weak. Weak…

The boom of the cannon cut through me. Sulla was still. Lifeless. Confirmed by the Capitol itself, our lords and masters. Sulla was dead. I had strangled the life from him.

The wire had cut into his throat and I had to pull it free, pry it out of his flesh. Once I got it free, I had to get it free from my hands too. I wasn't cut but there were deep marks scored into my hands. I threw the wire away. I didn't want to touch it again.

A millboy from District 9 had killed a Career. That would be something for them to discuss in detail, a five scorer killing a nine. Ellis would be at a loss. I looked up at the sky, giving them something to puzzle over. It was a nice day, blue sky with fluffy clouds. Were they real clouds? Or just part of the arena?

M2 was no longer a problem. I ran back to my pack and then ran back to the Cornucopia, suddenly burning with energy. The horn was stuffed full of treasures and I abandoned my blue pack for a larger black one that came with back support. I helped myself to a belt for a hip canteen that was full, collected a large serrated knife with a forearm sheath that would certainly be helpful and then I went for the food.

I took what was practical. A small sack of apples, a large bag of biscuits that I knew were more than simple cookies, bread rolls and more dried meat. I wanted to take more but… I had to be able to move and even drinking the hip canteen dry, what I had taken weighed too much. That was the worst part of food, it was heavy. You couldn't carry more than a few days on you before it started to break your back. What I had would keep me going for two weeks if I went to sleep hungry every night. A week if I ate to satisfaction. Even a millboy used to carrying sacks of grain and flour found it heavy.

I didn't know what to eat in the woods. I doubted that the pampered Careers knew anything either. They needed these supplies. They needed them more than anyone else. And the weapons too… All I needed was a spear. Not M2's, one of the others. All of this had to go.

I used my knife to puncture a small barrel of cooking oil and trickled it over everything. It was kind of them to have piled it all up. I opened up more of the barrels, sousing everything and throwing away any water. I dropped my pack, ran into the trees and gathered a few handfuls of wood and added it to the pile. I shouldered the pack, hearing the sound of an approaching hovercraft and found my matches.

The oil took rapidly, setting fire to the sacks of provisions and the wooden crates and for the few seconds I watched; warped the plastic bins. Amazing.

I couldn't run, too weighed down. I moved as fast as I could out of the open ground as behind me, a hovercraft retrieved M2's body. I had killed Sulla and set fire to the Careers supplies. It was the second day of the Games and I had made a mark. A significant mark. Destroying Careers supplies wasn't an original tactic, people always attempted it because it was effective and made pure logical sense. I wasn't sure though if a single tribute acting alone had achieved it before. Even if all my fire did was ruin half of it, it would still be a massive blow to the Career pack.

They had no way of knowing it had been me but they would be out for brutal revenge on all of us now.

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I didn't find my nook again that night, I found a different one. The river hid any noise I made but also hid any sound anyone else made. I seriously doubted the Careers would be hunting tonight, they would be salvaging whatever they could from the ashes and plotting revenge.

The sky that night showed M2 and then F10. District 10 was out of it now. It had been a busy couple of days. I wondered what they were thinking in the Capitol, what they were thinking back home. I had certainly made the highlights reel.

I had killed M2 from behind. I had never seen his face as he died. The Capitol would give their audience close ups of both our faces. Make sure everyone knew what I looked like when I killed someone.

Perhaps because I knew he would have killed me without hesitation, I didn't feel anything for what I had done other than a sense of enormity for having killed someone. Perhaps the mandatory viewing of the Games had desensitized me. Perhaps seeing people crushed in mill accidents had done it far better.

The cold was brutal. It radiated off the river but I felt safe here. I was burrowed deep into the sleeping bag but that didn't help. The only thing that did help was that at least I didn't feel hungry. My best chance was for the Careers to slaughter everyone else and then fall to hunger. If I rationed, maybe I could last two weeks. Maybe…

Perhaps I wouldn't even have to kill anyone. Else.


	3. Chapter 3

The smartest thing to do was to not carry all my food and weigh myself down. There weren't many landmarks along the river but there was a tree that acted as a bridge and that was distinctive enough to remember. I concealed half of my biscuits and all the meat in a hollow up another tree. They would last. My rolls and apples wouldn't. Bread and fruit, not the worst meal to live off… We didn't get much fruit in District 9. Bread though… far too much bread. When your District was all about grain, you started to choke on bread.

I picked my way downstream, looking for somewhere better to sleep at night. Perhaps I was crazy to think I might find a cave. It was better to look than not to.

There were ten of us left, the four Careers were likely still together and looking for the six of us, if they knew there were only six left. The Capitol never kept score. You had to do that yourself. You had to remember who was dead and who was left.

No one died on Day 3 and I found nowhere to sleep. It rained and my nook wasn't dry and my sleeping bag wasn't waterproof. I wondered how the others were doing on shelter. Only the Careers were assured a roof if they were still occupying the Cornucopia. I really hoped my fire had worked. Perhaps they were sleeping in the ashes.

Day 4… I spent the morning attempting to dry out my sleeping bag. I considered making a fire but I would probably set the whole forest on fire or just give away my position. There weren't just Careers to worry about. There were five others who were just as much of a threat. I wondered where June was.

I didn't have a plan now. Stay alive… I had a spear even though I didn't really know how to use it beyond sticking the pointy end in my enemy. What more did you need to know about a spear really? Not knowing where anyone was made any plan pointless. I knew nothing about the arena, besides the location of the Cornucopia and this river.

I carried on along the water. I couldn't get lost following the river and as it had been hammered into us during training that finding a water source was imperative, the other tributes were likely to be along this route. Perhaps unlike me they had found shelter, a place to base themselves while hunting or foraging. At this point though, only the Career female from District 4 was likely to have any knowledge of foraging if she could fish from the river. The rest were all production tributes, except for me, only I worked in the mills all my life so I could barely recognise wild grains. By burning the stockpile at the Cornucopia, I had made things difficult for everybody, not just the Careers.

I watched a pair of ducks swimming against the current, looking perfectly content. I was sure that another tribute would have known how to catch, pluck and roast them in short order. I wasn't about to throw myself in the river with my spear though. The ducks were swimming against the current with contemptuous ease but I didn't lose sight of how fast it was flowing. I could swim, everyone from District 9 could swim with a giant lake right on our doorstep but that didn't mean we took to the water the way District 4 did. Besides, their ocean was probably a lot warmer than our lake. We only went into it during the summer.

The arena was quiet though the size of it meant that all hell could be breaking loose on the other side and I would have no idea. The Gamemakers had ways of forcing us together if we became too spread out and comfortable in our positions. One year the tributes had all scattered and been left alone for a whole week, scavenging and living peacefully for seven days without a single kill.

On the seventh night the fires had started. The viewers had been treated to an overhead shot of the entire perimeter of the arena on fire and the flames drawing in toward the centre, driving the tributes and everything else toward the imagined safety of the middle. When the fires had gone out, two thirds of the arena had been reduced to charred ashes, two tributes had been consumed and the remaining nine had been thrust together. The Games had ended three days later, a District 2 female with four kills on her sword and wounds so terrible her Victor's interview had been a subdued affair. Even the Capitol hadn't been able to repair the burns to half of her face. Even the great Flickerman had been hard-pressed to make it positive.

Idly I considered that I was in an arena that seemed to be mostly woodland. It was a favourite of the Gamemakers as woodland provided adequate sustenance for the tributes as well as shelter and cover. Open arenas led to swift Games. One year half the tributes had frozen to death in an arena without wood and very cold nights which had gotten the head Gamemaker that year… we weren't entirely sure what had happened to him, only that he had been 'punished'. Knowing the Capitol, he would have been grateful to face a firing squad.

I remembered one cold arena though, covered in snow. There had been plenty of shelter though and matches had been plentiful in the Cornucopia supplies, letting tributes make fires in their caves with wood from the snow topped trees. That year had been lauded as the perils of the snow had made for an interesting spectacle; the Games had concluded with a District 7 tribute losing his axe and spearing a District 4 through the eye with an icicle. No one could say it had been anticlimactic.

The thud of the cannon boomed through the arena. One more tribute down.

I walked for as long as I could until the air in front of me seemed to shimmer. No one really knew much about the arenas. There was a school of thought that said there was a vast dome somewhere and the Gamemakers spent a year altering its interior for the next Games. I thought this was unlikely. The other theory was that they used they used District 5 to power a massive forcefield to create an artificial dome. Judging by the shimmering in front of me; that was what was here. Sometimes the forcefield threw anyone who encountered it harmlessly back while other times it struck them with enough power to blow off limbs. I wasn't going to test it. I was going back.

I watched the sky that night and felt a considerable emptiness wash through me as I watched June appear up there. We had barely spoken but she was still from home. At least now I didn't have to worry about meeting her. Tributes who killed those from home were not well received outside of the Career districts.

Day 5. It was a windy start to the day, the trees swaying in the breeze that sent the leaves whirling through the air. Five days… If my fire had been especially effective, the Careers would be growing hungry now. Two things broke up the Career alliances, hunger and tension. Six Careers went into the games and usually survived the bloodbath. The six of them faced against the half dozen surviving tributes and usually their alliance dissolved when the remaining real threats from the other tributes died. The Careers ate together in the training centre, they joked and laughed and were a nasty little gang toward the others. All the while they all knew that their alliance would end suddenly and brutally. It was almost a yearly event to watch the Careers turn on each suddenly and for a second bloodbath to ensue. As few as one might survive the carnage.

With nine tributes left in the arena and four of them Careers, that carnage wouldn't be far off.

I considered my enemies. Four careers, little F3, M5 who had made no impression on me whatsoever, M6 being from the transport district was much like me with no experience of weapons or dangerous tools unless he happened to be able to swing a wrench pretty well and F8 was from the textiles region and I wasn't sure how dangerous a dressmaker could really be. We were all meat for the Careers.

Meat… My Hunger Games were going okay so far. I was armed, I wasn't hungry and I had killed a Career. But I hadn't seen anyone else since. That was good. It was better to outlast than outfight if you weren't a Career. Flickerman had asked me if I had a strategy, if there was anything I could do to even the odds. I had snidely told him that unless the Gamemakers provided me a sack of flour and the other tributes were willing to stand still while I hit them over the head with it, I didn't have a strategy. I had thought I was being rude and contemptuous but the audience had loved it and Flickerman had declared that it was a fine thing to see a tribute so proud of his District's industry. It had been impossible not to smile along with him. I often wondered about Flickerman. The man had the strangest job in Panem, to interview twenty four children knowing that he would only interview one of them again and to do so in a way that made his audience laugh, that made his guests feeling happy to be there and to do it every year. How many dead children had Flickerman interviewed?

Did he ever lie awake at night remembering all the smiles his jokes had made?

He wasn't an evil man, except when he gushed in commentaries of previous Games over death blows. His interviews though were about turning nobodies into people the Capitol could know and root for. He had certainly done that with me. I had gone in sullen and uncooperative. I had left as the proud miller from District 9, resolute despite my shortcomings. In many ways, Flickerman was as much a friend to you as your escort, prep team and mentor.

With a pack full of food, I didn't have much to do. Other tributes would be expending all their energy on scavenging for food while I had nothing to do.


	4. Chapter 4

The weather was being entirely too friendly for my liking. I woke to a warm morning sun and the sensation of actually being too hot. Day six in the arena, fifteen tributes dead and nine remaining. It had been an action packed week for the audience certainly. I wasn't sure but I had a feeling the longest Games had lasted six weeks, the initial bloodbath taking twelve and the remainder dying two per week. I did remember the final two, both Careers, had stalked each other for five days until a final confrontation with the two of them sporting a dozen wounds each from the long chase.

I wandered along the river, wondering about other water sources. The lack of activity on this side of the arena led me to believe that there must have been another on the other side and perhaps that was where the others were.

Not so. I reached the treebridge again and though I was certainly no tracker, there were two sets of prints in the mud nearby, one set fresher than the other. Two tributes had crossed, one in pursuit of the other.

Two tributes… with six on this side of the river for sure, I decided to cross. I had already killed one tribute with wire, why not another two with the spear? By now the audience would probably have grown bored of me. I doubted I had any sponsors but if things turned against me, I might need them. Even if all I did was end up seriously injured, a parachute with something to dull the pain would be very welcome. It wasn't unknown for the Capitol to take pity on an injured tribute toward the end and fix them up, so they were in better shape to be finally killed.

The bridge was treacherous and having to hold a spear as I crossed didn't help. I also couldn't shake the feeling that it was a Gamemakers trap and the whole thing would suddenly break free and I would be swept down the river and drown. It would be a joke to them; grain spoiling in the wet.

Finally I was over and the mud once again betrayed the other tributes. My own prints were now added but I didn't especially care. All the mud did was point me in a direction.

There was something very off about stalking human beings, spear in hand, through the woods. Our lives were hard but never had I felt the compulsion to hurt others. The Games plucked us from our misery and encouraged us to turn it to hate against the other Districts. It was no wonder that the Careers nearly always won; the rest of us had no will to win, only to survive.

Home… If I made it home, I would never have to work again. I would be homed in the Victors Village and would receive a stipend from the Capitol for the rest of my life. The only cost was a slice of my soul as I mentored fresh tributes. At least there were other victors in District 9, others to share the burden. I was Ellis' surviving tribute. Perhaps he had written me off, perhaps he was garnering support for me. Probably he was swearing at the screen as I dumbfounded him.

I had no idea where I was going or what I was really doing. My only comfort was that everyone else was in pretty much the same boat.

The seventh day in the arena was cold and wet and reassuring. This was the weather the Gamemakers were supposed to inflict on us. My sleeping bag was growing progressively muddier but with little effort I could dry it out for the following night.

It was incredible how light my pack had become, how the food I had been laden down with had disappeared quickly. An apple a day and a couple of rolls, a biscuit if I felt my hunger especially gnawing… still dwindling away quickly.

There was one thing I had picked up in training, one thing that astonished me enough to stick in my head and that was that it was possible to eat the soft inner bark of a pine tree. With my serrated knife, I was easily cut out a piece and I munched on it, surprised by how palatable it was actually was. Perhaps I could survive off the trees if it came down to it.

I became aware of a stillness among the trees and not the one that usually surrounded me. This one was more complete, more ominous, more threatening. I put my pack down in the crook of a tree and held the spear, listening carefully.

They weren't footsteps, they were running steps and they came not toward me but from the side and I saw the streak of another tribute carrying a sword and then there was a scream and a clash. I started forward without thinking, knowing that I stood far more chance if I took advantage of this fight than if I waited for it to resolve itself.

F2 had stuck F8 in the flank with her sword in her surprise charge but F8 carried a long stick and used it to keep the shorter sword at bay though I could see immediately it was futile. A cruel smile played on F2's feature, her black hair drawn back in a tight ponytail that seemed to crack like a whip every time she stepped. The wound she had given F8 was brutal and I could see her weakening, her attempts to bat F2 away becoming more and more feeble. She stumbled back against a tree and F2 smiled in anticipation. She stepped forward as F8 collapsed back against the tree and then suddenly frowned, stepping away. She turned and looked right at me, some sixth sense having told her I was there.

The smile returned. The look on her face told me that she was glad now to have a real challenge rather than the helpless F8.

I jabbed the spear toward her to see her response and she slapped it mockingly with the flat of her sword. Both were made of the same metal and the metallic ring was almost welcoming after hearing nothing but nature in the arena for days. The spear had a considerable advantage over her but she didn't see it that way. As far as she was concerned, it was merely a hindrance. I saw F8 sliding down the tree, clearly resigned to sit and wait for whoever won to finish her off.

F2 was older than me though we were the same size and I knew our strength wasn't that different. She may have trained for the arena but I had worked all my life, I was strong.

She was fast though, faster than seemed possible. She sidestepped and came at me and I brought the spear around to slap her in the side, pushing her away. I turned and she grinned, still unconcerned. She was toying with me, sizing me up. She stepped again and this time I was ready, thrusting but only at air as she slid away from the questing point. She was calm, as if she was still training. Killing me meant nothing to her whatsoever.

"Alba right?" I remembered all their names and my voice felt gravelly from lack of use. "District 2. Volunteered. Came here with Sulla." Now it was my turn to smile. "How is Sulla?"

"Sulla's dead." She played along, her eyes darting about as she sought an opening.

"I know. He really struggled as I throttled the life out of him if it's any consolation."

Her smile disappeared. "You?"

"It was really nice of you to leave a pathetic cripple guarding all your supplies. I've been eating really well for days." The Careers knew each other far better than the tributes from other districts; often enough they had trained together for years beforehand and referring to him as a pathetic cripple hurt her in a place she probably hadn't known existed. It was insulting for him to have died at my hand and the jibe about eating well alerted her to another fact. "Do you think setting fire to your food was too much? I thought it was. But makes great television, don't you think?"

Now I was the one who seemed above her and the superiority complex of District 2 over the others came to the fore and Alba was incensed. I had killed her fellow tribute, ruined her supplies and now I was acting as if killing her would be no more difficult.

She swatted the spear out of the way and swung her sword but I brought the spear haft up to meet it and the two pieces of metal met each with a numbing force that made both of us drop our weapons in shock. More shock for me than her; Alba tackled me and I went down as her head struck hard into my gut, winding me. Her fist sailed into my jaw and as much as it hurt, I could see she had hurt herself just as much. Her next blow went into the softer tissue around my left eye and before she could deliver a third, I recovered enough to grab her fist in my hand and wrestle her off me. I was right about her strength, the two of us were comparable though she had far more control while all I had was brute force. We wrestled for a moment, hands latched around each other's arms, preventing further blows, kicking up the leaves and snapping twigs. I felt one jab into me and I felt Alba stiffen as we rolled and her back struck a rock.

With a sudden surge of adrenaline, she threw me off and gymnastically leapt to her feet. She had her sword before I knew what was happening and came at me swinging and I kicked from my space on the ground, both feet connecting sharply near her groin and she went flying back but she kept her footing though she was clearly agonised by the attack. I got up on my own feet, still winded, half-blind, weapon-less. Alba however didn't count me out, having already underestimated me.

She stepped to attack again and I dodged, grabbing the first thing I could, a pathetic little stick that became even more pathetic as she swung again and her sword cut it in two. I threw it and by luck rather than design it struck her in the forehead, making her reel and giving me the chance to dodge away again and seize my spear once more.

Alba stepped slowly, circling me, her left hand out for balance though clearly desiring to massage her bruised groin just as I wanted to rub my bruised eye. She stepped more heavily than before, no longer smug and confident.

"I had to sneak up on him. He never saw me coming, never even knew who killed him." I didn't know why I suddenly confessed this but it served to put her off guard after my previous taunts. "I could never have killed him in a fair fight. I knew that. We're all murderers here really… but strangling him from behind with some wire… that really is a murder, isn't it?"

Alba's sword had dropped almost entirely as she processed what I was saying. People died in many ways in the Games but often enough it was in duels like this, weapon against weapon. It made people forget the realities of the Games that no matter what, death was still death, whether clean or messy.

Suddenly the sword was up again as she cleared her heads of the doubts I had inflicted and her left hand shot forward to seize my spear and she tugged, thrusting the blade at me and pulling me toward it simultaneously. I stepped but not enough and felt it gouge my side. Without thinking I headbutted, smacking my forehead hard against her nose and feeling something give way. I threw myself forward, knowing the only way to end this was to keep the sword from her grasp. She lost it as we went down and punched me in the gut. I took hold of her arm again and rolled, trapping her left under her and bringing my left to my occupied right hand. I could feel my side growing warm and wet as I bled. My eye seemed to be swelling shut so my view of Alba became smaller, much smaller and her eyes widened as I released her arm to seize the knife from the sheath on my left. She had not anticipated a millboy carrying a concealed blade.

She managed to roll and seized my throat with her right hand as her left took hold of my right that was bringing the knife down on her. Both grips were like vices and I tightened my hold on the knife until I felt like my fingers were going to snap, leaning all my weight onto it, inching slowly down onto her as her left hand strangled me, giving me an all too terrifying glimpse into what Sulla had experienced.

The blade sunk inexorably down to touch her chest, sliding between her breasts. She released my throat, both hands resisting my right now and the only thing holding me up was my left hand supporting me in the dirt.

"Please."  
Suddenly Alba was no trained killer, no lethal member of the Career pack. What I saw through my one good eye were tears in the eyes of someone who knew they would never live to experience adulthood, someone who was no more than a scared child. A pretty girl who had probably stolen plenty of hearts during her flirty interview with Flickerman.

Whose eyes widened as the blade slid into her, glancing off a bone and then she jerked as the knife pierced her heart. She died almost instantly, her teary eyes looking right through me with no expression, nothing at all. Ghostly. Her hands released me, her arms flopping grotesquely to the sides.

The blade was stuck firm and even if I could have pulled it free, I didn't want to. To do so would feel like I was desecrating her, pulling it free to tear her flesh and bring the blood pouring, gushing out of her. There was already blood on her face from her nose and I absently wiped it away and then closed her eyes. If not for the knife hilt sticking out of her chest, she could almost have been sleeping.

The cannon boomed, a little late it felt. I was still knelt over Alba, knelt over that sleeping form. I reached behind her head and released her hair from what felt like a scrunchy. I looked at it and wondered if this was her token. I slipped it around her wrist and then arranged her black hair in a fan. Finally I got off of her and found her sword, placing it in her hands on her chest, hiding the knife hilt. With her hair arranged in a fan and the sword held close, she looked like a splendid warrior in slumber. Like Snow White waiting for her prince to come.

No prince came. Only a hovercraft that plucked her from the arena in its metal teeth like it was picking up trash. I placed my fist over my heart, head bowed as it took her away.

I sat in the dirt. I had killed both tributes from District 2 and in equally brutal fashion. I had outright murdered Sulla and Alba… I had killed Alba with a trick. A concealed weapon was something the Careers would do, in fact the blade had been intended for one of them to carry, concealed in their sleeve for just such a fight. I talked of the Careers being dangerous but I had proved in seven days of the Games that I was just as deadly and dangerous as any Career tribute. More so maybe, because I didn't think I was dangerous.

I became aware of her slowly, still against the tree, watching me in silence, hands grasped to her side. My own side was gouged but I could feel the blood drying. I would be okay. I stood slowly, retrieving my spear and using it to support myself as my side protested against having any weight on it.

I wondered what I looked like to her, standing over her spear in hand, one eye swollen shut, bloodied, bruised… having just witnessed me stab another tribute in the heart. She looked up at me with big brown eyes, framed by hair that was as dark as Alba's though her skin had been pale while this District 8 girl's was a light warm tan. There was a curious slant to her eyes and the whole shape of her face was unusual. I remembered seeing someone like this briefly before once, on the far side of District 9.

She continued to look up in silence and then swallowed. "Just do it." She said.


	5. Chapter 5

I gazed down on the District 8 girl. I had the spear in hand, all it would take was one thrust. Or would it? Did I even know where to thrust the spear? Even if I did could I thrust it accurately? Or would I end up with a screaming, twisting girl skewered on the end of a metal rod in my hands? I sensed the whole of Panem watching. If the Gamemakers had permitted them to see my honourable treatment of Alba, they would now be wondering how I would treat this second tribute.

"How bad is that?" I asked, looking down at her side.

"Bad."

I knelt, unafraid of her. If she had been able to kill me, she would have done so while I was distracted with Alba. I pushed her hands aside and saw that Alba's sword had done its work and without proper medical attention, she wasn't going to survive. She had already lost a lot of blood, far more than I had.

"What's the point?" I almost wasn't speaking to her. "You're already done."

She looked at me numbly and then nodded. It wasn't exactly mercy I was showing her. Mercy was for someone who would live.

"Besides. I'm not far behind you." My side was throbbing ominously. I planted the spear in the ground and went to retrieve my pack. When I returned, she was still sat and continued to look at me with those big dark eyes, her emotions difficult to read. I saw the surprise in her though as I sat down next to her.

"What are you doing?"

"Do you want to die out here, all alone?"

She looked at me and then trembled, sniffing. She took hold of my hand and squeezed and I could tell immediately that she was already weakening. "Thank you." There was some huskiness to her voice though she was trying to control it, to stay strong to the end.

I looked around. This spot was exposed, dangerous. "Where did you sleep last night?"

"In a tree."

"You can get up the trees?"

"Not up one, in one. It was all hollowed out."

"Where is that?"

She pointed and I thought about it for a few moments.

"Do you want to go there? It might be more comfortable. It'll the keep the rain off you." I had barely registered the slight drizzle but now I became aware of it.

"I don't think I can move."

"I'll carry you."

She was a petite little thing and she could have been my age or she could have been fourteen for all I knew. It was no difficultly to pick her and her pack up in one. Her nails dug into my neck in pain as I lifted her but I barely noticed. Alba's finger nail marks in my arms were crusting over now. I followed her directions and carried her until we can to a tree that was as she said, all hollowed out. It was a wooden cave and perfect shelter. It was a good place to die.

I set her down and then to her surprise, produced my sleeping bag and slipped her into it.

"You may as well be warm." I shrugged and then because we were enemies, I went through her pack.

She had some more matches, crackers, one strip of dried meat, a canteen similar to the one I had first picked up and a tiny folding knife that unless stuck into a tribute's eye or neck was of no danger to anyone. That was all she had.

"You must have been cold."

She nodded, clearly broken up over the warmth of the sleeping bag. It was horrible luxury to have only once you were dying.

"Hungry?" I asked with a smile and drawing a small one from her. I fished a roll from my pack and her big eyes grew even larger.

"You have bread?"  
"Something I picked up from the Careers." I handed it to her and there were so many significant things about the gesture. First, she was from another District. Alliances might be formed between the pairs from a single District but almost never did those from different Districts team up, save for the Careers. Secondly, food was precious and especially since I had burned the Cornucopia. Giving it to her was shocking. Thirdly, she was dying. Giving food to a dying girl would be seen as either a foolish waste or a beautiful mercy.

She looked at it in wonderment and clearly didn't know where to start. Perhaps she was thinking everything that I was. Perhaps she appreciated all the meanings behind it. Perhaps it had been too long since her last real meal for her to truly believe she had it.

Finally she ate it, picking at it slowly, pulling small tufts of bread from it and eating them carefully. I was looking outside, musing that the day wasn't far along.

"You're the millboy."

"I don't think that's the greatest nickname."

"It's what Joanah called you."  
Joanah I presumed was her mentor. "What's your name?" At the moment, I couldn't recall it.  
"Does it even matter anymore?"

She made a good point. This was hard to argue with, though I found it difficult to look at her and think F8. "What happened this morning?"

"I was in the woods on the other side of the river. I think I walked around the entire arena and then she found me. I hadn't seen anyone except little Kayla." This was F3. "Then she came out of the trees suddenly and she almost got me. Almost. I could run faster than her though. I made it down to the river and got across. I thought I'd lost her." She looked at herself. "Guess not."

"There's only three Careers left. Just three."

"And four of you."

"Maybe they'll even things out for me." I shook my head. I had killed two Careers through lucky chance. Even if one of them was killed by the others, it still left two trained fighters to contend with. My other three opponents… I didn't think of little Kayla as much of a threat and she had probably survived this long through stealth. "District 8 then… textiles."

"District 9, grain."

"Grain. Wheat, rye, barley… I only see it when it's being ground into flour. Grains go in one end, flour comes out the other. Each and every day. What did you do?"

"Depends. I usually make dresses. I once had a shift in the factory that makes Peacekeeper uniforms."

"How much spit goes into them?"

"Interfering with the manufacture of Peacekeeper uniforms is punishable by death." She was quoting and I wondered how many in District 8 received the death penalty for simple sewing mistakes that were declared treason.

"What isn't?"  
She shrugged. I doubted this conversation would make it to the Capitol or the Districts.

"Panem's breadbasket." That was the nickname for District 9. When someone signed up for tesserae, it was usually our grain they received. I imagined all those poor souls in Districts 10, 11 and 12 being nourished by our grain at the price of increasing the risk of coming here, I wondered how bitter it must have tasted. "If District 9 and 11 just stopped, the whole nation would fall apart in a matter of weeks."

"It wouldn't make any difference if we stopped."

"Don't you make stuff for the Capitol? They'd all die if they lost their clothes."

"We just send them cloth."

"11 grows it, you turn it into cloth and the Capitol turns it into their costumes."

"Why do you care?"  
"I've spent my whole life turning grain into flour. The rest of the District is out in the fields, ploughing, sowing, farming, harvesting… All I ever do is make sure the wheels keep turning and turning the grains they grow into flour. I hate flour. What you do… it's interesting, isn't it?"

"If you say so." She smiled to herself. I was curious about the other Districts because we knew hardly anything about each other.

I sat beside her and I wondered how the rest of the world was taking this in. I was probably playing on the heartstrings of the audience by staying with her as she slowly bled to death. I could see her side was turning blue, indicating she was bleeding internally. I wondered what the people of District 8 thought of a tribute from another District comforting one of their own. I wondered what my own people thought. Perhaps they thought we could win this year.

"Thanks." She said. "For being here. They don't tell you how lonely it is in here. They tell you to look for water, find food, how to throw knives and make a spear. They don't tell you that the last person you speak to is your stylist and then you're all alone. It's worse than the cold, worse than the hunger… loneliness."

"That's why there's only one victor. No one to share the experience with." I looked out at the trees and felt tired.

"At least now I have you, millboy."

"Poor company." I mused.

"Do you have anyone at home?"  
"Why do you ask?"

"You seem like you don't have anything to fight for."  
"I don't. My mother died when I was baby and my dad… my dad…" I chuckled dryly. "They had raised the production quotas and the only way to meet them was to increase the shifts from twelve to eighteen hours. My father worked eighteen hours a day for two weeks straight. By the end of it he couldn't think straight… none of them could." This was the portion of the story that was difficult to tell. "The cold weather can cause grain to get stuck at the top of the silo. My father had lost all sense and he tried to clear it out from the inside. He was crushed when it fell on him. Twenty tons of grain…" I scratched at the fingernail marks in my arm. "They blamed him for it, they blamed him for ruining twenty tons of grain. I work for nothing because all my wages go to paying off the cost of that ruined grain. Every day I have to work with the stuff that killed my father, to repay them for the loss of the stuff that killed him and I have to claim tesserae and live off the damn stuff. Because my father did back breaking labour for fourteen days with maybe four hours of sleep a night if he was lucky." I closed my eyes and inhaled. "People think it's a funny story; a man stupid enough to drop twenty tons of grain on himself. That's the only experience of fighting I have; beating the hell out of people who think it's funny."

She didn't know how to respond to this and really, who could? It was my story though and telling it to someone, did make me feel somewhat better about it.

"I have three sisters, one older. One little brother. They all knew I wasn't coming back. We all knew." She inhaled, clearly fighting the need to cry. "At least we got to say goodbye."

I put an arm around her and she flinched but only because she hadn't expected it. She was grateful and the audience would be very confused. I had brutally killed two tributes and now I was easing a third toward the grave. I could almost hear the commentators calling it the true spirit of the Games; ruthlessness and mercy in equal measure.

I gave her an apple but her appetite was waning. It was a bad sign.

She was right about the loneliness though. Simply being beside her took away an edge I hadn't even known I had been feeling. I wasn't a social person but even in the mills, you had been surrounded by people. Even with the work, those people might be happy or as content as you could be in a District. Their good mood was yours, most of the time.

"So you haven't killed anyone?"

"No. No I haven't." She sounded proud and rightly so. The Games might have claimed her but they hadn't made her into a monster.

"I've killed two Careers. Sulla and Alba. District 2… wiped out by a millboy." I mused. "I wonder what that's done to the betting odds in the Capitol."

"You shouldn't talk like that."

"Why? What's the chances of me getting out of here?"

"You've killed two Careers."

"Luck." Things with Alba could have gone very differently if she hadn't been overconfident.

"I think you might make it. Someone destroyed all the Careers' food and I think Kayla's the only one who really knows how to forage. She's fast but she can't run forever."  
"She can hide though. Forage, run and hide; she could outlast all of us. I definitely can't run." I looked at my side and didn't want to think about walking long distance let alone running. "Burning their supplies really did help though."

"You did that?"

"I knew I wasn't going to last long out there and they had all the food. I reckoned they wouldn't think anyone was stupid enough to try and take it so I thought, why not try for it? And I did… luck… Luck and whoever stuck Sulla in the leg… Didn't think I'd succeed but I thought it was better to die attacking."

"And you think you can't win?"

"There's still three Careers left and I won't have surprise or luck on my side if I meet them."

"You should win."

"I don't want to win. I'm about the only one who doesn't have a reason to. But I don't want to die… That's it though isn't it? I live and everyone else dies…"

She nodded. It was the truest fact of the Games and I had been stating the obvious but saying it out loud to another tribute helped deal with the fact.

"So many things I never did." She said.

"Don't think about it."

"I'm dying." She managed to say it with a degree of amusement. "I'll think whatever I want." She managed to look defiant. "At least I never had children."

I grunted. I didn't like to think about how hard it must have been for mothers in particular to lose their children to the Games. Fathers spent so much of their lives working that most had little or no relationship with their children. That was the perhaps the Capitol's second greatest crime, reducing men to lonely slaves.

Right now, I was actually the least lonely I had been in years.

"I've never been kissed." She mused, almost out of the blue, except she had already said she was thinking about things she had never done. "You?"

"There was a girl… a long time ago… Her family was moved to the far side of the District." It really had been a long time ago. The two of us had been twelve and the kisses… her idea. I still thought about her from time to time but I wasn't pining for some lost love. We had still been children…

"I've never had anyone…" She was looking at me with a very odd expression and I suddenly put two and two together.

"What?!" I said rather foolishly.

"I am dying." She managed to laugh and then winced as the movement pained her. Even though I knew it was genuine, it was still very well played.

"What makes you think I'm that kind of guy, Sora?" I remembered her name now.

"You could be dead tomorrow."

This was a good argument but there was still the fact the arena cameras were watching us and more than likely with great interest. This made for good television. I could almost imagine the perfumed and powdered Capitol people yelling at their screens, egging me on to grant this dying girl a last wish. It was sickening.

But it wasn't about them.

District 8's Sora proved to have very soft lips. Soft and dry thanks to the sword wound in her flank. I was already reaching for my canteen before we parted.

"You call that a kiss?" She asked teasingly. She was flushed and clearly thrilled though not because of me. She took the canteen eagerly enough and after sipping, looked at me again with those big brown slanted eyes. For someone in a lot of pain, she looked very… enticing.

I indulged her. Not just because it was what she wanted and because she was dying but because honestly, kissing at sixteen was very different to twelve. This wasn't simply a brief touch of lips, this was more, much more. I placed a hand on her cheek, as we seemed to duel, challenging each other.

All too soon we seemed to grow weary, our wounds catching up with us both and as pleasurable as it was… it was effort, a lot of effort…

"Now I can die." Sora said wistfully, cutting through me far more effectively than Alba's sword.

"Eat something."

"I'm not hungry." She said and suddenly her eyes were full of sadness. "I'm so sorry."

If anything, her first kiss was every bit a final wish for her as it was for me. As enjoyable as it had been… beyond all belief… there was a certain finality about it, like I had accepted without any further doubt that I was not leaving this arena in any other way except in a hovercraft's claw.


	6. Chapter 6

I wanted to be awake but it was impossible. Sora had dozed off not long after our kissing, exhausted by the effort of dying. Killing Alba had taken a lot out of me and the arena had taken its toll. I wasn't awake when Sora died, and I knew that as I hadn't been holding her hand when I had fallen asleep that she must have woken and rather than wake me, had chosen to silently slip away while grasping one of only two friendly hands in the arena.

The cannon woke me and it took me some time to turn and look at her as I felt her lifeless fingers entwined in mine. She had closed her eyes in death and I was grateful as it would have been too painful to see those large brown eyes with their alluring slant, lifeless.

I extricated her from the sleeping bag with some difficulty as I was reluctant to disturb her but I would need it. She flopped about grotesquely despite my efforts to keep her head still. She might have had something useful on her but there was no way I could desecrate her that way.

All I could do was take her out of the hollow tree and lie her in the open, at peace. Free from the Games. Hopefully she was in a better place. Whatever that place may have been…

I didn't take my eyes off of Sora until she had disappeared into the belly of the hovercraft. Perhaps I had been alone too long… perhaps kissing her had been the most enjoyable experience of my life… all I knew was that I would never have met her without the Games and I had given her small pleasure in her last hours.

The parachute drifted past my face and I continued to gaze skyward, watching the point where Sora had disappeared forever. It was early, barely after dawn. Wake up time during the Harvest. Millers enjoyed a wakeup at a little more decent hour but it was still brutal. I wondered how District 8 textiles workers started their day…

I knelt and took in the small tin. It was plain silver and the silken parachute reminded me of the bed back in the Capitol. I hadn't slept for two days in those silken bedsheets…

The tin contained what I knew at once was medicine. It had virtually no colour, having an oily look to it and the appearance of needing to be smeared. I knew it was for my sword-cut flank and I felt the overwhelming compulsion to throw it away and scream and scream and scream until either tribute or lack of breath silenced me. I didn't know if this stuff could have saved Sora… I only knew my mentor had waited until now to send this to me so that I wouldn't 'waste' it on her.

There could only be one Victor…

Clearly he thought that I had a chance and others did too, if he could send me this. That was more depressing than heartening because it meant people thought I was an excellent killer. Though my treatment of Alba and Sora had probably also earned me popularity. Brutal but kind…

It was the eighth day of the Games and there were seven of us left. It was considerable attrition. Some Games might be drawn out over a couple of months but some might last a single week. I didn't think these Games would last especially long.

I didn't feel like drawing them out. I had my dwindling supply of food and my spear. Others might have liked to keep to themselves, last as long as they could… I just wanted it over…

I wiped the medicine upon my side, feeling the pain I hadn't really been paying attention to, fade away. I should have looked grateful, maybe even said something. But the more I thought about it, the more furious I became. Allies came together knowing they would have to turn on one another. Sora and I had not been allies. I had only been there to watch her take a mortal blow and make her comfortable as she passed from the Games. Aside from a brief moment right at the beginning, I had never thought of killing her.

She was dead for entertainment.

I wandered back to the river and crossed the bridge. I left my cache of food alone as I still had some rolls and apples left. I did check that it was safe as I wouldn't have put it past the Gamemakers to have interfered with it. Biscuits and dried meat… As much as apples and rolls were starting to stick in my throat, I knew those rations would be worse.

I still had plenty of iodine so the water was still plentiful. I was in clover comparatively speaking. Every time I blinked I saw Sora's smile. I could feel the wire in my hands that I had used to kill Sulla. As I considered my rapidly healing wound, I heard that single plaintive whisper for mercy from Alba. I had slaughtered the tributes from District 2 and shared some wonderful kissing with the female tribute from District 8. The three experiences did not mesh, they clashed horrifically.

During the mandatory viewings of the Games, I had never really considered the mental state of tributes. Some had obviously gone insane or psychotic but others, it was difficult. I had wondered if the Capitol was working on a way so that tributes thoughts could be broadcast, rather than just feelings interpreted from their faces. I wondered what the commentators were making of me right now. Perhaps they were working the angle that I had enjoyed a brief romance with Sora, tragically cut short…

The thought of it made me want to kill someone but definitely not my fellow tributes. Only the Gamemakers, people in the Capitol… The president who presided over it all. I couldn't have been the first and I wouldn't be the last…

I watched the sky that night and saw Sora's face again, one last time. I wondered what she had looked like before her stylists had gotten a hold of her. With her big eyes and bright smile, she hadn't needed much work. Not like me. Mine had actually commented that I looked so very ordinary that there wasn't much they could do with me.

Seven of us left. The Final Eight's family were always interviewed and Sora's would probably now be answering questions regarding me. Difficult questions about how I had shown strange respect to their daughter's killer and then made advances on their dying child… The Capitol always made drama out of nothing. It was their job.

Seven of us left. Three Careers. One of them would be the victor. It was inevitable.

One of the things about the mandatory viewing of the Games was that it meant I knew what to expect in an arena. Some were incredible death traps while others were mundane. This one had been mundane so far and that was a problem. The audience needed their thrills and tribute versus tribute wasn't always enough to sate their appetites.

I didn't want to think about what might be lurking around, hidden away below ground or in the trees. Perhaps they would release mutts or fire or turn the temperature all the way down and make it snow. They could do anything they liked. In this arena, they were Gods.

Gods who kept their eyes on me. After nine days you found yourself picking out the larger ones. Most were invisible to the naked eye or camouflaged. Others you could see focusing in on you, the lenses constricting and dilating with a slight whirr.

The audience would be okay for awhile with the number of deaths lately. At the moment, they would be more interested in watching us suffer. I was okay for a bit, after today I would have to go back to my cache. My meat and biscuits would last me several days maybe… then the Hunger part of the Games would take hold.

I decided to head to the Cornucopia, either for a confrontation or to see what it looked like after the fire. I would have a better idea about how the Careers were holding up. Death may have inevitable but it was always good to know the odds. It was all about odds. May the odds be ever in your favour… They never were though. That was the point.

I was strolling through the trees like the most reckless fool to ever grace the Games but I didn't see why not. As the odds weren't in my favour and never had been, being careful or being reckless really didn't matter any difference; I would die either way. What were a few more days of life in this place? Maybe with Sora as an ally… I smiled momentarily at this wicked thought and then banished it from my mind because she was dead and with a single victor, one of us would always have been required to kill the other.

Suicide wasn't a frequent occurrence in the arena. We were all too young, too eager to cling to life… Sometimes you wondered if an accidental poisoning had been deliberate and the Gamemakers had just edited the footage. No one knew the truth.

My truth was that I wanted to die. And the sooner the better... I had already murdered two people. How many more could I kill? Who would kill me? Some Career with a professional thrust of sword or spear, a thrown knife maybe… perhaps little F3 would drop from a tree and smash me over the head with a rock.

It really didn't matter.

To that end I didn't even bother to scan the trees before strolling out into the open toward the Cornucopia. I could see from here that it was blackened and scorched. My fire had certainly been successful.

No one challenged me. If anyone was watching they probably thought I was insane. The viewers wouldn't know what to think; so far my boldness had paid off. It was probably my trademark…

The horn was filled with ashes, puddles of melted plastic and the blackened and warped metal of weapons. I had almost certainly left everyone still alive in this arena resorting to improvised weaponry to supplement what they had managed to grab during the Bloodbath and whatever the Careers had possessed while they had been out hunting during the fire.

Continuing with my recklessness, I climbed to the top of the Cornucopia. The route I took wasn't an easy climb and I would be difficult to reach; no one would be able to creep up on me without the sound of their climbing on the metal reaching my ears. If Sulla's leg hadn't been injured, this was probably where he would have stood guard.

It was foolish to be up here with my almost finished supplies. It would have been smarter to retrieve my cache and then come up here in case I was cornered by the Career pack and they tried to wait me out. But I doubted it. With nothing left for them here, they were doubtlessly scouring the arena for obvious food sources and the remaining four Careers.

I was rather familiar with the route to the Cornucopia and back to my cache now anyway. I could retrieve it and settle in a nook by the river before night had truly fallen. I wondered how I looked up here, with my spear and my pack would look like it was stuffed full of supplies when really it was just my sleeping bag which was a real luxury, especially as the other tributes might have nothing to keep them warm at night. The Careers alone probably slept by a fire. No one else would risk it.

The weather continued to be unsettlingly pleasant. Here I was sitting in a reasonably comfortable position, in a low grass meadow with an encircling boundary of trees and a nice breeze in my face and I definitely didn't feel like I was locked in a struggle to the death. If anything this was something I had never had; a moment to rest and relax and enjoy the world.

Even if it wasn't real.

I sat there for a couple of hours before I saw movement. I had seen ducks in the river and heard birds in the trees but I hadn't seen any ground animals and I still hadn't. What I saw was either M5 or M6. They stood out by the tree line, unafraid of me because I was too far away, just as I was unafraid of them. They were probably trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing keeping a vigil on the worthless Cornucopia. Well… worthless unless the Gamemakers announced a feast and then we would all descend upon it. It was a sure fire way to force a confrontation.

We gazed at each other for awhile and for no reason other than that I had tried to remain civil in here, garrotting and heart stabbing aside, I waved at him. For moment he didn't react and then perhaps because of the absurdity of the situation, he waved back.

It was the last thing he did. What was unmistakably M1 suddenly appeared beside him and I had a view of his throat being cut, a spurt of blood clear even at this distance. He fell to his knees and though it was unlikely, our eyes seemed to meet. What was he trying to convey? Accusation for distracting him and letting M1 kill him? Gratitude for a touch of friendliness before he was killed? Perhaps for no reason other to see someone in death… He fell face first into the grass and the cannon sounded.

With his bloody blade, M1 gazed at me now and then bolted into the trees. I knew immediately he was going for reinforcements. I wasn't going to stick around for three Careers.

I made it back to the river and sat up in a tree in case they were in pursuit. I didn't know if they had any tracking skills but if they did, perhaps they wouldn't be able to track me up a tree or even think I could climb one. I wasn't going far. The hardest part was getting the spear up. The only way to do it was to thrust into the bark as high as I could, scramble up and pry it loose.

No Careers showed up. I was safe until the fanfare played and I learned it was M5 who had died today. Six remaining, three Careers… their falling out was inevitable. They were probably only still together because their pack consisted of two girls and one boy. Two Career boys would have turned on each other days ago, especially considering how depleted our ranks were.

Six remaining. Eighteen dead in nine days.


	7. Chapter 7

Day ten. I had seen tributes suddenly look like they were weighed down with bricks before and today it seemed to be my turn. It was cold and I was exposed. I guessed they were trying to make the arena more unbearable, to make us suffer in a different way to the carnage we had been inflicting on each other.

I built a fire. At this point, no one would be drawn to smoke because it would seem too much like an obvious lure. I made it into an especially large blaze to properly warm up and in all honesty, I had never made a fire before; it was a lot of fun to build it up. I wandered around, gathering all the wood I could find and feeding it in until anyone could have crept up on me and I would never have heard them over the crackling and occasional roaring as the breeze caught the flames.

After waking with a chill in my bones, I was actually scorched now. It made a pleasant change…

I thought about my cache but decided, not today. I would finish what I had left and gnaw on some more pine. That was if I didn't just burn it all. The other tributes would be watching the smoke, wondering what it meant. Perhaps some would be thinking it was a trap that had been triggered and some tribute was staggering around with serious burns. Others would think it was a lure, the Careers probably. How would they be doing? The three of them would eying each other warily now, thinking continuously that it was three against one, one and one. If they had kept count. Either way though, they had to know that their alliance was just about done.

Had M1 been enjoying F1 and F4's company over the last few days? Had F4 grieved over M4's death on the first day? Had they been angry at Sulla for dying and losing them all their supplies? They would have had no idea what had happened to him and might still have been blaming him now. Had they mourned Alba? Was F4 thinking that any moment the two from District 1 would turn on her for the last instance of District loyalty before going their separate ways? It seemed likely. Perhaps she had already taken off, leaving the pair from District 1 with a burning tension.

Hunger Games politics… It wasn't my concern at all, mine was staying alive. But these were the questions they would be asking in the Capitol and even across the rest of Panem. Even if we hated the Games, you were still drawn in, still made to wonder who would become Victor and why. Every Games where two tributes from the same District were forced to fight had been a new level of horror. The two from District 1 were the only ones who could still face it. All the rest of us were entirely alone.

Little F3 was thirteen years old. She was from the technology producing District, what did she know about survival? She was still alive though. They said everyone from District 3 was smart so that had to be it; she was playing smart, not vicious. I was playing smart, or I had been at the beginning. Now I was playing reckless. For all I knew, Kayla was watching me right now, drawn by the blaze and now wondering what the hell I was doing pacing around it. Maybe it was M6, the transport boy. What did that even mean? What threat was he to me? What was I to him? Perhaps they all still thought of me as a harmless millboy. That was the thing about being in here. On the screen you knew everything but in here, you knew nothing about what anybody had done unless you saw it with your own eyes. You never knew who the real threats were.

My side began to hurt so I smeared some more of the medicine on it. It already looked almost healed. I had seen people working with severe injuries and if the Capitol could provide me with medicine that healed a gash made by a sword practically overnight, why the hell had I seen men with a crutch in one hand and a sack of flour in the other hobbling about? Why had there been men tending to the grindstones with thick bandages on their arms to cover where the vicious machinery had cut them? We weren't worth it; that was why. We were resources, just as much as the grain my District grew.

I couldn't even have my own thoughts. I was already playing their Games and I was playing them in my head as well.

Day eleven. It was chill again. Chill and quiet. It was silent except for the sound of the river. There was no breeze, nothing to disturb the trees and no bird sounds. I was up immediately.

I listened intently but it seemed that it was just quiet. No one was around. No one was about to attack me. The silence meant nothing, nothing at all.

I put my sleeping bag away, trying and failing not to think about the fact that Sora had died in it. It was still quiet so I headed toward the river, toward reassuring sound.

Also toward my cache. That was the last of my food and then I would be left with pine and nothing else. Not unless I got something off someone else. That was probably the Careers' strategy… though as they didn't have a choice it wasn't actually a strategy.

I felt lazy walking along the river, spear loose in my hands. It was all so peaceful and would be until it wasn't. There were only six of us left in this vast arena and we might have been miles from each other or the audience might have been on the edge of their seats because we were almost on top of each other. There was no way of knowing.

I had left prints in the mud from every other trip I had made this way. It only proved I had been this way, it didn't reveal anything. My cache was where I had left it and I was even surprised the Gamemakers hadn't tampered with it. It would not have surprised me if they had planted a nest of tracker jackers in there. Or set the entire tree toppling into the river while I climbed.

I settled against the tree, letting one of the strips of dried meat bounce off my teeth as I gazed at one of my biscuits. What went into this to make it sustain me as much as it did? It was a dry tasteless thing and not particularly big but they had kept me going more than they should have between rolls and apples. Another Capitol wonder…

A bird sang suddenly, twittering away and breaking the silence and making my whole body loosen up.

What was happening at home? What would they be saying to the Capitol people looking for someone to interview about me? There wasn't anyone. I didn't know if my parents had any family; perhaps some obscure relative would find themselves being pressed on details about me that they couldn't hope to provide.

Perhaps they would simply invent a life for me. I wasn't going to leave after all and who would dispute whatever they said? There was no one to disagree at home and the Capitol and the other Districts, they would believe whatever they were told. My mentor, my stylists, Flickerman; they had already made me something I wasn't.

And then they had put us all in here and we were all no longer who we had once been. Once I had spent half the hours of the day making flour go into hoppers or sacks and now I was the one who had killed both tributes from District 2 and if by some strange miracle I did survive, that was who I would always be; plus who else I killed to win. Whenever they interviewed that years mentors they would always replay their kills, question them about them and make them relive them. They wouldn't ask me about moments like this. Moments spent peacefully sitting against a tree by a river, listening to birdsong. They would ask me about Sulla and Alba and then about Sora.

Now I understood why some Victors were famous alcoholics and drug addicts. Even if they survived, they were never allowed to forget. The reward for winning was a comfortable life and the punishment for winning was a comfortable life remembering everything you had done to earn it.

Perhaps the only luck you could have after being Reaped was a quick death. The ones who had died in the Cornucopia Bloodbath, most had died with no blood on their hands. None of them had suffered through the cold nights, gone hungry, spent hours and hours and hours alone with just themselves and their thoughts.

"What are you doing?"

I scratched at my head. I seemed to have finally snapped.

"Over here."

I followed the sound and looked up to see F3. Little Kayla was stood well away from me, more than far enough away that she could be far away before I could stand. It also meant that she could have crept up and killed me easily… maybe.

"What are you doing?"

"Resting."

"You got your food." She glanced up above me momentarily.

"You knew it was there?"

"I saw you put it there."

"You were watching me?"

"I've been watching everybody." Her eyes widened momentarily and my skin crawled.

"And you didn't take it?"

"I thought you might need it."

"Might need it?"

"You killed the boy from District 2. I saw you. I stole from him without him seeing and you killed him. And you burned everything." She rubbed her throat and I wondered if she had made a sound since entering the arena. "Then you came here and hid some of your food. I lost you after that. I saw the Careers though. They passed right by here, looking for you I guess. They didn't see me but I saw them kill your friend."

She could only mean June. "Which one?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not really." I sighed. "Which one?"

"The girl from District 1." Her eyes drifted away from me. "They thought she killed the boy from District 2, they thought she set the fire, they thought she destroyed all their food. They kept punching her and kicking her and telling her to admit it. She didn't. She kept saying it wasn't her. They broke her legs."

A harsh cry rang out, tearing into me and a few seconds later I understood that I had made that sound. June, the girl Ellis had put all attentions to, the girl from the barley fields who had asked me questions on the train, where in District 9 I had come from, what I had done, if I had brothers and sisters, if I thought I could win, if I thought our mentor would be helpful, if I had any plan to win sponsors. I had grunted answers to all her questions, ignored her. She had been friendly and kind and I had shown her nothing but indifference.

"The boy from District 1 said he believed her and he broke her arm and they left her. But the girl from District 1… She cut her throat. I think-"

Kayla leapt back in fright as the rock clattered off the tree beside her.

"WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?" I was looking for another rock, scrabbling in the leaves. "I DIDN'T NEED TO KNOW! Why, you little bitch?!" I hurled another rock and it barely made it to her, skittering along and stopping a couple of metres from her feet.

Kayla looked petrified but she swallowed and more words tumbled out of her little form. "Because I saw it! And I couldn't do anything to stop it! But you, you can make it right."

The trees and the water and Kayla were spinning around me now, and the rumbling, the endless rumbling of the grindstones was filling my ears. "What are you… What… Who do you think I am?"

"I saw what you did for the District 2 girl after you killed her, I saw you with the District 8 girl. You're going to win. You have to win. What they did to her; you can't let them win!"

The grindstones were pounding in my ears now and my throat was thick with the pale dust that constantly choked the air. "Go away."

"You have to-"

The stick skimmed her hair and it flew by and she dived away from the second.

"Go away! LEAVE ME ALONE! FUCK OFF!" I scrambled to my feet and Kayla ran, taking off through the trees before I could manage a step as my spinning, grinding world thundered around and through me.


	8. Chapter 8

His name was Cassius Silk but to everyone in District 9, he was known as the Spider. He wore jet black suits and shoes with red ties and laces. The hair on his head was the same vivid scarlet. Black and red… like a deadly spider. And every year he came to our District and perched on his stage, smiling down at us with a hand held over each of the Reaping Bowls, waiting for us to form up, waiting to lunge and claim his victims. First the Peacekeepers would paralyse us with the threat of their guns and batons and then Cassius would numb us with his 'Hello again, dear friends', 'blessed Hunger Games' and 'may your tributes bring honour to your District and display true loyalty to your Capitol'.

The Spider was through and through a gentleman and that meant ladies first. Some Districts they picked the boys first but the Spider, he always brought out the girls. Perhaps he thought that if a weeping twelve year old was dragged onto the stage he would be fortunate and pick out an older boy who clench his jaw and face it like a man, removing the embarrassment.

What made it easier not to look for a stone to throw at him was knowing that everyone else was thinking the same thing. We all wanted to pelt him off him perch and only the threat of the swift and likely lethal retribution of the Peacekeepers kept us from doing anything but enjoying the group fantasy.

I didn't know the girl whose named he spoke. There were hundreds of children in District 9 and it was a big District. This was the only time we were all together. The girl, June Barton, was my age. My age… over halfway to being safe from the Games. So close. She walked resolutely up to the platform where the Spider welcomed her with a warm handshake that still demonstrated his revulsion at touching one of us. She received only a nod from Ellis. The Victors of District 9 took it in turns to mentor, each deciding to saddle the responsibility of two tributes rather than each taking one. With three Victors in District 9, it gave them two years between Games. I guessed the Capitol thought we were too unimportant to force two of them to their responsibilities.

Cassius made another speech about the virtues of women and how of course no woman was complete without support from an able man. He then went on to say 'But of course, every woman knows she doesn't need to be complete to triumph', his way of humorously pointing out that June might well have to kill whoever came up to stand by her. The Spider sifted around in the bowl with his left hand, adjusting his tie with his right and then slid a piece of paper out on the tips of his slender fingers.

I had tried to eat only what I knew or at least could name but the Spider would have none of it. We were in the Capitol, not the 'Shadows of Civilisation'. I didn't even know what he had put on my plate and he had squeaked at me until I ate it. The unfamiliar food combined with his mindless disappointment in our stylists to make us stand out had made my stomach churn.

Now I was lying on the floor on my back, gazing out at the impossible city below. The tower we were in was puny compared to some of the buildings out there and they were all lit up. Not with the harsh lights of the mill factories at home or the lights the Peacekeepers used to keep watch on us, instead a warm, genuinely comforting light. The same light I could have switched on in here.

A door opened and it was her, June. She did turn the light on and my groan as the light seared at my eyes made her jump in fright. That wasn't inspiring.

"What are you doing?"  
"Couldn't sleep."

"Because the bed's too soft?"

"Yeah." I left out my stomach problems; she looked queasy too. We had both suffered on the train.

"Like trying to sleep in a cobweb." She remarked and smiled. She was making a joke about Cassius and it was funny but I didn't laugh. She came over and sat down and looked down on the city. "It doesn't seem real, does it?"

"No."

"But it is, and here we are."  
"Here we are."

"Are you going to talk to Ellis?"

"Why?"  
"We have to learn. We have to be ready!"

"Ready for what?"

She gazed at me and I tried to figure out who was looking at me, the girl at the Reaping and on the train, the girl beside me on the chariot with her hair styled to resemble an ear of wheat who had worn a golden robe or the girl sat beside me in a modest nightdress with her hair loose. I didn't know. I didn't recognise the boy in the mirror in my room. Years spent indoors in the factory had made my skin pale and now I seemed almost golden by comparison. How did do they do that? How did they change a person's skin colour? I might have only looked like a normal fieldworker now but it wasn't me. "We have to be ready for the arena. We have to be ready to fight."

"Why?"

"Do you want to die?"

"No."

"So you have to be ready?"

"What does it matter if I go down in twenty seconds or twenty days?"

"You're not going to try and win?"  
"I can't win. We, can't win."

"Why not?"

"Districts 1, 2 and 4 have won the last ten Games. And if it's not them, it's District 7; the people who swing axes for a living."

"District 1 makes jewellery. Do you think they'll throw bracelets at us?"

I let her have this and smiled rather than be pedantic and point out that District 1 relished the Games and their tributes went in trained. It was true that other tributes from Districts with no transferrable skills had won before. They just didn't manage it as often as the tributes who volunteered in District 2, learned more than enough in District 1 and grew up spearing sea life in District 4.

"What are you going to do in training then?"  
"I'll train."

"Why?"  
"Something to do."

"You're not even going to try?" She asked again.

"Death is inevitable." I said.

She had no idea why I said this and regarded the glow of the city for a while. I wanted to get up and go back to my room and privacy but my stomach said stay. Stay, and enjoy the sound of someone talking to you for a change rather than barking instructions at you. I didn't know my stomach was saying the second part but as the first part had me grounded… well it was something to do.

"I have to try." June spoke softly, addressing the pane of glass. I have people."

"I know. You told me. The rest of the calendar…" Her family had already breathed a sigh of relief as her sisters April and May had come of age, along with her brothers Jan and March. Now she was here and that left only her brother August to make it through the Reapings, unless her parents added July, September, October, November and December into the mix though I had no idea if the last four would have been boys or girls. I thought they were stupid names, like the kind District 1 would have given. I was mildly curious about the missing child February but not enough to ask.

"I know it's different for you. It really doesn't matter to you either way."  
"No, it doesn't."

"You shouldn't just give up though. You could have a whole life ahead of you."

"And then you wouldn't."

"What are the odds of the two us ending up as the Final Two?"  
"No one would bet on it."

"You shouldn't give up." She looked at me and she was very obvious. "At least don't make it easy for them."

"Not going to." I grunted. "Just not playing along."

"What are you going to do when you meet Flickerman then? Just ignore him?"

I didn't think any tribute had ever ignored Flickerman and spent their interview in silence. When a tribute was at first struck dumb at he would make a joke about them being overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the crowd and then say something else that would get words spilling out of them, words he could use. I almost smiled as I considered a question I would have liked to have asked Flickerman; if he had any idea what colour his hair had originally been. "We'll see."

"And Ellis?"

"If he focuses on you, would you care?"

"You should have a chance too."

"Why?"  
"Because it's fair. Because it's right."

I was pretty much offering all the advantages she could get by ignoring our mentor and she was rejecting it… out of a sense of fair play?! "What are you going to do with Flickerman? Got it worked out?"

"I'm not funny. I'm not scary." She looked over herself and smiled ruefully. "I'm not sexy." She had a homely quality to her certainly but compared to the Capitol people and the toned beautified tributes from 1, 2 and 4, she wouldn't be stirring any carnal thoughts. "So I'll have to be strong and friendly and myself. I want to go home and I'll say that."

"Mention all those brothers and sisters. They'll be gushing over you."

"Mention being an orphan; they'll love you."

I glared at her but she only shrugged. I was the one who had been nasty first. "You really think you might go home?"

"I know I have to try and if I go in there sure that I've done everything I could to even the odds and then if I'm killed; I'll know at least I tried. I did my best to make it home. And I can die with that comfort."

"But you won't, June. You'll die in agony because of what the Careers will do to you because of something I did and the only reason you won't be in excruciating torment for hours is because one of them will mercy kill you first."

The forest floor wasn't like the hard marble of the Training Centre. It was damp and cold. The view was a short distance of forest floor. And there was no June. Just me and the memory of the girl who had only wanted to go home and had now joined her dead baby brother February. My curiosity had finally gotten the better of me and I had asked before we had presented our chosen skill to the Gamemakers. Her parents had had seven children and now they had five and perhaps next year or in the years to come, that number might drop to four.

I was lying for dead on the arena floor as the night closed in around me. Either Kayla was a master of psychological warfare or every word she had spoken was true and the girl from home I had almost had a friendship with had died a horrible death because she had suffered the misfortune of being there when the Careers had wanted to vent their rage over what I had done.

I hadn't asked if Alba had been there with them. I wondered if my kind treatment toward her slain body had been considered ironic in the Capitol, if she had been there as the hovercraft had retrieved the mangled, broken body of June.

What came to me, again and again, was the thought of M1 breaking her arm after telling her that her interrogation was finished. That was done only for pleasure. Not out of anger, not of revenge. Only the sick desire to do harm.

There was no doubt in my mind; Renown had to die. If someone died in screaming agony, twisting and writhing on the end of the spear I carried, it would be Renown. It had to be. It would be.

If it was the last thing I did, I would kill Renown.


	9. Chapter 9

Day 12.

Who was the enemy? In here, everybody. You knew the only way out of the arena was if everybody else was dead and no matter what you thought, you weren't going to keep your hands clean if it meant going home.

But outside the arena, who was the enemy then?

The Peacekeepers obviously made sure no one carried any weapons into the Reaping and from that moment, you were entirely in the Capitol's power. What could you do? You were carefully monitored every second from the moment you were Reaped so you couldn't take your own life and escape the Games that way. What would killing yourself achieve anyway? The Capitol would just say that you were a coward, forfeiting the honour of your District. If you wanted to live, if you wanted to come back from the Games, you had to play them. The Victors who had won without killing anybody, they had survived by hiding until everyone else was dead; either by each others' hands or the Gamemakers. You didn't score a moral victory by hiding and letting others do the killing; you were just branded a strategist, who aware of your weakness had left the other tributes to take care of one another for you.

You had power over nothing.

Twelve Districts. Twelve of us and nine of them were taken and the other three volunteered. The Careers, they made the Games what they were. There would be no Cornucopia Bloodbath without six of the twenty four going in trained and eager to kill. If all of us, children, went in with nothing; who among them could strike the first blow? I had killed Sulla because I knew he would kill me in a heartbeat but my first kill could have been the girl from District 11 if I hadn't been struck by the enormity of what I was supposed to do to her.

A Career almost always won because they had the winning mentality. The rest of us, if one of them won it was because they snapped, because the desire to go home made them every bit as brutal as the Careers they had feared in Training. Like me.

What would it have been like if there were no Careers? If twenty four unwilling and terrified tributes were pushed into this arena? Perhaps we would sit and wait for the Gamemakers to slaughter us; with traps, with mutts, with the weather… Then it wouldn't be a spectacle; it would only be Panem watching twenty four children killed by adults from the safety of a command centre.

Maybe if I won, I would talk to the other Victors and see if we could get all the non-Careers to band together and take down the Careers at the Corncopia and then simply refuse to fight. There was a dream. What an act of rebellion that would be. A simple calm pacifism. That would take the fun right out of the Games. Even the Capitol citizens couldn't enjoy it then if they were watching machines slaughter kids.

Six brutes though, down to three now. Probably still together. Probably hunting the three of us, each thinking about how they would kill the others the moment the time came. I had killed Sulla with inspiration from a previous Game but they had come here with mentality that let them torture a girl before leaving her to die of her injuries; except one had a bit of a conscience. Maybe… Perhaps she just wanted the kill credited to her.

What was I doing? Prowling up and down the river, looking out for the Careers, thinking about my desire to kill them for what they had done when if I met them they would gleefully tear me apart. If I met Kayla again, I couldn't kill her. M6… Maybe if he attacked me I could kill him in the heat of the moment.

The Careers. Always the Careers. Why hadn't paid attention in training? Maybe at one of those stations I might have learned how to set traps that might have killed or crippled them. Instead I was walking and carrying a spear with only the knowledge that you put the pointy end in your enemy. I had been carrying the damn thing for days but I hadn't used it.

We were twelve days in and there were six of us left in the arena. There was no reason for me to meet anyone. Perhaps Kayla was still stalking me, maybe she had moved on and was trailing the Careers.

Just me and my damn mind, raging against the Capitol who had brought me here, the Careers who wanted to be here and the resignation I had brought with me. I should have been dead by now. Other people with things to live for and motivated to go home, they should have been here. June should have been here. Instead I was; the most undeserving son of a bitch and non-Career to make it this far.

I kept walking until I met the forcefield again. Was there even anything beyond it? Stupid question to ask.

I carved some more pine and gnawed at it. I barely even noticed my stomach anymore. To think I had been hiding and rationing my food with some strategic thought. What was the point? I was here to kill the Careers or die trying.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][]

"You know I never knew my mother. I don't even have a memory of her. She never existed. And my dad… working father… left me with the neighbour until I was old enough to be on my own… seven. She never liked me. Took me years to figure out why. She couldn't have children and looking after me for my dad, that just made her bitter. At least she never had to worry about having a child come here." The camera whirred as it focused in and out on me. Maybe they were broadcasting what I was saying, maybe not. If they were I would be edited. "Then I never really knew my dad either. I wish I'd had brothers or sisters, June made it sound great. Do you know what happened to June? I don't. I don't think little Kayla would lie to me, so maybe you're all real excited about me and the Careers having a showdown. That'd be fun, wouldn't it? Great fun. The stuff of Games legend." The camera seemed to zoom right in on me. "Since I've been here… You know I've liked being out in the woods? I've spent so long stuck watching grindstones I hear them in my sleep. But out here, it's quiet. It's nice. I like it. Does make me mad? I like being somewhere where I'm going to die. That does make me mad."

I stood, getting away from the camera. There were everywhere but the visible one had caught my interest. I wondered what would happen if I went around breaking them, how quickly I would be eliminated by traps or driven toward the Careers.

The thirteenth day in the arena was as quiet as the last few had been. It had been four days since M5 had died. Four days of peace. They would be playing highlights and talking about the mental strain on the tributes. I'd be great for that. Spitting and cursing at Kayla would make for great speculation. The Careers would have certainly raged at one another when they found their supplies destroyed and that would be another great highlight. They would probably be playing them back to back, comparing us. Great TV…

I could have struck out into the middle of the arena but I knew this river now. It was familiar ground and I knew that it was better to fight on ground you knew.

"Because I'm a Career now. All tactics and strategies."  
Had I been sane at home? Grinding gears and the stink of flour. A whole life time of it… The people in the fields they got some variety. My life in the spring and the fall had been identical.

"I guess this at least mixes my life up." I looked up at the sky, wondering if anyone was looking back. "Death is inevitable. And death… death makes a difference. It makes all the difference. June dies up on screen, I feel sad for a little while but I still think, it was inevitable. And then I find out how she died and it shouldn't have been inevitable. It shouldn't have been meaningless. You know what that makes me? That makes me a real asshole." My voice would be carrying but who cared? "Sora's parents; if this makes it through to you. I'm sorry. I hope you liked that I helped ease her passing, and I hope you don't hate me, thinking I took advantage. If I make it out of here, she's going to haunt me the rest of my life. They'll all haunt me. Sulla, Alba, Sora, June… I know that. That's the prize of winning; remembering forever."

It felt so good to vocalise what I had been thinking. So good to hear a voice, even my own. Kayla… Her words, her horrible, horrible, matter of fact words… They were bouncing around my skull but at least it had been the sound of another human being.

"Alba's parents… She may have volunteered. She may have wanted to be here. But I think she got it before the end. She got what this place is. I'll never be able to hear someone say 'please' ever again without thinking about her." I chuckled, feeling the bile surging in your throat. "I'll never have manners again. Alba is 'please' and Sora is 'thank you'."

What were the others doing? What were they thinking? Were they going completely out of their minds as well? No wonder Ellis always stared off into space. I got it now. No wonder he hadn't liked me with my attitude; I hadn't even wanted to try and stay alive and now here I was.

[][][][][][][][][]

I had slept through the rain with a soggy sleeping bag but this I couldn't ignore. I wasn't damp, I was lying in a puddle. I shuffled out of the bag and out of my nook and tried to pierce the darkness.

The narrow river wasn't as narrow as before. The dark water was growing, slipping silently over the forest floor. I pulled the bag out of the muck, rolled it up and put it away even as they water approached my feet. There were bubbles in the water and I heard them now, making glooping and slurping sounds. They hadn't increased the water flow, they were pumping it straight up into the bottom of the riverbed.

"Oh fuck…"

I ran. There was only one reason to make the river bigger and that was to flood the arena. The other side were Alba and Sora had died would be cut off or covered over and this whole part of the arena below the Cornucopia would be a lake.

My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw where I was going even as my ears picked up a new sound. It was a quiet rustling. Not the wind in the trees but water through the leaves. As it had spread over flat ground it had silently picked them up but now it was flowing downhill and rushing over them.

I was running downhill… I was running away from a flood by going downhill. There was nowhere else to go, I realised sharply that there was a small valley between me and the Cornucopia. Perhaps it sat on a hill in the middle of the arena and they were driving all of us to it.

The rustle became a defined trickle, like a washroom of taps going all at once and for a few seconds I imagined that water sweeping up leaves and washing along branches. Then I didn't have to as my feet splashed and the water gushed past me. I was still going downhill and the water, the water was rising over my boots, pushing at my ankles.

Debris swept past me, not just a mess of leaves and twigs but bigger branches that jabbed at my legs and clawed at my feet. My feet were sticking in the mud now, every step harder than the last. I needed to go faster but now the water was up to my knees and I was wading, not running.

My stomach shot up into my mouth as my feet went out under me and I was reminded that water wasn't soft as my hands and head slapped into it. The spear slipped away, gone in an instant, out of sight and out of mind as my pack dragged me under and my world became a dark freezing haze. I thrashed and somehow managed to roll over onto my front and I gasped for air that hurt my lungs as it went in cold as the water caught me and threw me along and my feet couldn't find the bottom.

I hurtled past trees, pulling at the water desperately to avoid being slammed into one. We were still going downhill, me and the water, faster and faster. It had me and there was nothing I could do. Even the girl from District 4, she couldn't have beat this current. What chance did a millboy have?

I managed to tread water, even as I began to shiver as the freezing water stole the feeling from my toes and finger tips. There was no way out of it. If I snagged a tree and climbed who knew how if the water wouldn't just keep rising until it plucked me off again. I had no idea how deep it already was.

Finally and with my clothes and pack heavy with water, we seemed to slow down and I assumed I was in the valley now and it was filling. Filling fast it seemed as I was still being pushed along and craning my neck around, I could see white water where the current coming down the slope hit the bottom.

I tried to swim. I tried. But my pack and my clothes were too heavy and my feet in my shoes were useless. I couldn't kick with them and I ended up splashing and tiring myself out.

I laughed. What a way to go. Caught in water, helpless, the strength ebbing out of my numbed limbs, until I either slipped beneath the water and drowned or just… faded away. I had watched people fade away from infected wounds, maybe taking days as they shivered with fever. Falling asleep in the cold and not waking… drying out under a burning sun without a drop to drink. These were the ways of dying that they called 'a failure of will'.

Not me. Not yet.


	10. Chapter 10

Did I swim ashore or did the current push me? I didn't know. I had no comprehension at all of how long I had spent in the water before becoming aware that half of my body was now lying in the mud.

It didn't feel as if the mud pulled me down but rather something else pushed me from behind. I had no strength to stand or even to crawl, pulling myself across the dirt, slithering, like a worm. Not a snake; snakes were dangerous. I was harmless… helpless.

I dragged myself away from the water and up against a tree, resting my right shoulder and head against it, resting until some measure of strength came back to me. At home I had often slept on one arm, waking up to it completely numb. My whole body felt that way now. It was comforting. Nothing hurt. I had a powerful urge to sleep, and it called to me. Go to sleep it said and let go. Just let it all go.

I fought it and slipped free of my pack and the weight fell away and gave me an immediate rush of energy. It took longer, much longer to wrestle free of my jacket. The feeling of cold changed, the air hitting my exposed skin rather than the soaked material of my sleeve.

Regardless of the danger, I needed to make a fire. If I didn't get warm and dry, I was going to die anyway. If my fire did draw attention, perhaps it was better to die to a swift knife thrust than from cold and exposure.

The matches were waterproof, something I hadn't appreciated when I first gotten them back at the start. I could start a fire then.

With the weight of my pack gone I was able to stand though they were baby steps and I continually flailed to keep myself upright. I couldn't gather much… but anything was better.

It took maybe half an hour and seven matches to get a blaze going and though my eyes streamed from the smoke as my kindling leaves frizzled, it was hot smoke and dried my hair out and made a bit of a change to my clothes. I fed the fire, feeding in sticks and leaves and wondering where the others were. Perhaps they were as messed up by the flood as I was.

The arena was smaller now, much smaller. I didn't know how much smaller but I had a feeling that none of us would feel like there was the safety of space again.

Perhaps the flood had broken up the Careers. I couldn't imagine them staying together any longer. Perhaps they had taken their chances during the flooding and I had missed the cannon blasts as I had been swept along. I wasn't sure of how much time had passed. Perhaps I had been lying in the shallows for a day or two… I had no way of knowing.

It didn't matter. Losing track of the days didn't mean anything. I didn't even have a weapon now. If someone came along now, I could put up a thirty second fight… maybe… before becoming completely exhausted. That was it. Perhaps I could find a big stick…

My biscuits were spongy but still perfectly edible. My dried meat was ten times chewier than before. But still edible. Gnawing on it was tiring but I wasn't going anywhere. I chewed my food and kept adding dribs and drabs to the flames.

I pulled off my shirt finally and twisted and squeezed the water out and then put it back on before doing the same to my jacket. I had a vision in my head of gathering some larger branches and crafting a drying rack. I didn't have the energy though. All I could do was take off my shoes, wring out my socks and twist my soles to the flames until they dried out and began to feel scorched.

The heat woke up my body slowly and I missed the numbness because I had been battered by the water and I felt it all as the feeling came back.

What did I look like now to the watching audience? Had they watched, hearts in mouths, as I had tumbled along in the water? Were they wondering where the boy who had been addressing the sky was now? I didn't know. Sitting quietly and listening to the crackle of my fire, watching it eat twig after twig… I didn't feel like telling the world what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking anything. Except maybe, now would be a good time to die. I was tired… Somewhat comfortable… If I could have just slipped away right now, that would have been ideal.

I did my best to dry my sleeping bag but I would have needed a bonfire to do that. I didn't have the energy. Failure of will…

It cut into my senses slowly. The sound of rustling; feet trailing through the undergrowth. I looked around wearily and it seemed my wish was coming true. F1 was trudging along, cradling her left arm and limping. She saw me.

Ray had an oval face, pointed at the chin. Brown hair, brown eyes… She was good-looking but not in a striking way. At the interviews certainly but after two weeks in the arena she looked natural. The way we were supposed to look. We gazed steadily at each other and I shook my head. I didn't have a clue what I was trying to convey with this. 'Don't kill me'?, 'Just do it'? maybe even 'What's the point?'?

She approached slowly and I saw her arm had been slashed. I couldn't see the reason for her limp but that didn't mean anything. She came at me slowly, with no visible weapons. Perhaps she was going to beat me to death with her good right arm. She stooped and picked up a branch. Beaten to death then… That was a way to go… A way to go.

Ray sat, facing me across the fire and continuing to stare. Now she was close, I could see she was exhausted. Maybe even as much as me. She was also pale. She had lost a lot of blood. She was too tired to fight and the fire… she leaned into it. Her arm wasn't bleeding anymore but it was obviously hurting her. She had no weapons, no pack, nothing. Clearly the Career pack had broken up and she had lost everything. Perhaps Renown was the one who had hurt her. I liked to think so. It made me feel a bond toward her, even if there might have been nothing to feel.

She broke up her branch and placed it on the fire. Had she ever picked it up with the thought of killing me or had this always been her intention?

"What are you doing, Ray?" I used her name deliberately.

"I'm cold." She said, blinking as smoke curled at her eyes.

"And then what?"

"I'm cold." She repeated.

I could see that she wasn't thinking that far ahead. Like me, she was too weary and beaten up. She was a Career but she had reached this point too. It didn't look like she had been in the water but I guessed she had taken a beating and there was probably a lot of bruising hidden under her clothes.

"You were in the water." It wasn't a question.

"All night."

"You're alive."  
"Just."

She stood and I watched as she gathered more wood, lots more, more than I could have managed. I felt eerily calm as I watched her. If she decided to kill me, I couldn't stop her, so why worry? As all she was doing now was making a bigger fire and helping me, even though she was only really helping herself. Two of us sat by a big fire were vulnerable but… she seemed to care as little about that as I had.

"You got any food?"  
"Seriously?"  
"I could kill you, and take it." She almost smiled. It wasn't entirely an empty threat but she didn't have anything to kill me with. There wasn't even a big rock lying around. None of the wood she had gathered made a decent weapon.

I took a strip of dried meat from my pack and reached across the fire. Ray snatched my arm tightly and fixed me with a hard gaze. She sized me up and I saw myself through her eyes. She didn't know about anything I had done and didn't seem to suspect it either. All she saw was a damp, weak millboy without the strength to pull back. She didn't need to try and kill me, yet.

She released my arm and took the meat in one fluid movement. I still felt calm. As it turned out at this point, the inevitability of death wasn't frightening. I would have thought that waiting for it to come at any moment should have been terrifying. But it wasn't. The water had leeched more than the warmth out of me, it had taken all my cares away.

"What happened to you?"

Ray regarded me stonily for a full minute and I could see the Career contempt for me. "We were asleep and then we heard the water. We didn't know what it was at first but we decided something making that noise couldn't be good, so we ran. Renown decided that was the time to break the alliance. He killed Fiona for sure and then he tried to kill me." She lifted her arm. "He didn't get me though. Asshole."  
"He's from your District."

"Yeah; that's how I know."

"You killed the girl from my District."

"Did I?" It was a response of both weariness and indifference.

"You broke her legs first."

Kayla hadn't been lying. The look on Ray's face made that clear. "I didn't do that."

"No?"  
"Alba caught her. Renown wanted to know if she was the one who torched our supplies. She didn't say anything because she was too scared. And he got angry so he broke her leg… and she was too busy screaming to answer any questions, so he broke her other leg. I guess it hurt too much then and she was able to talk. She told him 'no'. She hadn't torched our stuff. He thanked her, shook her hand and broke her arm." She shook her head. "Sick asshole. We were trained to kill quick, efficiently, effectively. But Renown, he liked to hurt people. I never trained with him until we reached the Capitol but I heard stories. My mentor told me to kill him the moment I got the chance."

"And you cut June's throat." It wasn't an accusation but she took it as one.  
"I wasn't going to leave her lying there!" Ray snapped ferociously. "She'd have taken days to die, in unimaginable pain. That's no way for anyone to die."  
"I didn't know Careers had consciences."  
"You want me to kill you?"

"With what?" I asked pointedly. "And we wouldn't be talking if you had the strength."

She nodded, acknowledged that was the only reason I was alive. "Yeah, I killed your girl from your District. Want revenge?"

"No. You gave her mercy. I want Renown."

"Get in line." She said. "You're not afraid of me, are you?"

"Too tired, Ray. Too tired. I'm cold." I echoed what she had said deliberately. "You're hurt and you don't have any weapons, so you won't take your chances. Not yet. Maybe later… when I can't keep my eyes open any longer. Maybe you'll wrap your arm around my throat and strangle me."

"Maybe I'll walk away." She said. "Maybe I'll let someone else get you."

"No. You're wondering what's in my pack. I think you know I don't have any weapons. But you think I have a lot of food and you need that. And the sleeping bag, if it dries out."  
"You're smart."  
"I just try to imagine how you people think."

"Well… if we've got any surprises for each other, I don't think we're in much shape to do anything about it."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"Why don't we just… wait here for a little while… see what happens?"


	11. Chapter 11

I had endured eighteen hour shifts on occasion but that was after a good night's rest in a bed. Definitely not after pulling myself out of a lake after being unconscious for some time.

I had no way of knowing how long I sat by the fire opposite Ray, warily watching one another in a pained silence. Perhaps it was my imagination but I sensed that being with me this long grated heavily on her nerves. She had said she was trained to kill quick and efficiently. Sharing a fire with someone she planned to kill went completely against that training. The Careers had shown contempt for us in training but that neutral area was a world apart from the arena.

But she had no weapons and being weak herself, she lacked the strength to kill me with her bare hands. Trying to kill me would be ugly and I might kill her or just injure her. Either was unacceptable.

I was thinking like a Career now.

I couldn't kill her. I didn't know how. A piece of wire with surprise on my side had won me that first time. Fighting Alba had been the heat of the moment, and I had had a spear and a blade. Now I had nothing and strong as my hands were… I didn't think myself capable of beating or strangling her to death.

But she had no weapons either and her injured arm was a serious deterrent. I had no idea how many times the thought had run through my mind that if she attacked me, I had to go for that weak limb. Thinking like a Career…

Or maybe just someone who wanted to stay alive.  
Night was rapidly descending when I finally asked the question.

"Are you waiting for me to fall asleep?"

Ray said nothing for nearly a minute before sighing. "Would you believe me if I told you I want you to fall asleep, so I can go to sleep?"  
"No, I wouldn't."  
"Pity."

"You really think I could trust you?"

"I know you can't trust me." She smirked bitterly. "That's the worst part. Right now, we need to trust each other and I am the last person you would trust."

"Second to last." I countered.

"Maybe." The smirk remained. "I've been thinking about how to kill you all day, and I've got nothing. Everything I could do makes me vulnerable, so I do nothing."

"That's not comforting."  
"I'm here to kill you, not comfort you."

I wondered if she had any idea about the words that came out of her mouth.

Ray sighed again. "I am tired. I am hungry. I am hurting." She flexed her left arm and winced. "I don't think you would try to kill me in my sleep… But I don't know who you've killed or how… And I know you're not an idiot so you know the best time to kill me is when I'm asleep." She was rambling and I wondered how little she had spoken since arriving here. I seriously doubted the Careers had meaningful conversation. "It's dark. No one's going to be out now. We both need sleep."

"Yes we do."

She lay down though she was clearly still keeping an eye on me. I continued to lean against my tree, doing the same. I had thought earlier in the day how simple it would have been to die here. But now… I wasn't as resigned.

Though I was powerless against the desire to sleep. The resignation came on again and I let myself drift off.

[][][][][][]

My dreams featured wheels. Lots of wheels. If nightmares were when you were scared in your sleep, what did you call dreams which were boring? There might have been a comfort in boring if the rumbling of millstones hadn't been a constant hell for me.

It was dark. Very dark. It had to be the middle of the night. My boring dream had woken me.

There were some embers in the fire still alive, tiny red specs in the darkness. It was cold and all I had was my jacket that was still faintly damp. I twisted my back to ease the aches that had settled into it and a shape started at the movement.

"RAY!"

She woke immediately and kicked at once at the shape looming over her. A very masculine grunt responded as her heels slammed into its groin and knocked it over. In the darkness, I saw the glint of a sword.

My eyes adjusted to the dark as Ray and her opponent rose to their feet, becoming more than just vague shapes.

"Renown, you asshole." She sounded calm, much calmer than I would have been. Much calmer than I was.

"Hey, Ray." He rhymed deliberately and I couldn't tell if he glanced in my direction or not.

It was as far as the small talk went. Renown lunged with astonishing speed but Ray dodged to the side and chopped his outstretched arm with her hand. He kept hold of the weapon but the way he shook his arm told me she had given him something to think about. He went for her again with a vicious slash at eye level but she stepped again and I recalled my struggle with Alba. I had kept her at bay with my spear but Ray knew what to do even while unarmed.

I pulled myself up against the tree as Renown thrust again and this time she seized his wrist, tugged him off balance and dealt him a kick. She used her hurt leg and even as Renown grunted in pain, I heard her whimper. The pair spun apart, reminding me of dancers and making me wonder about the connections my brain made when I was in mortal peril.

Renown had the only weapon but as well trained as he was with it, Ray was equally well trained at fighting at a disadvantage and continued to dodge and duck his increasingly wild attacks. I realised she was frustrating him, that with her injured arm and leg she was still giving him hell. She skipped about in the dark, favouring her good leg and looking for an opening.

I reached down and sank my fingers into the dirt as Renown appeared to come millimetres from cutting her throat. The wild swing exposed him and she was on him, driving her fist hard into the side of his neck with a meaty thump and she spun away as Renown brought his elbow questing around for her. She retreated back as Renown followed it up with her an advance of vicious swings that cut only air but drove her back. I pushed myself forward.

Ray backed herself against a tree, Renown lunged and the blade struck the trunk as Ray slipped to the side, right into Renown's swinging left arm, trapping her and I saw his head go forward and heard his forehead strike her skull as he drew back the sword for a final thrust.

I leapt and latched hold of Renown's back and he bellowed in surprise and then shrieked as I drove my handful of dirt into his eyes. He was a sack of muscles that rippled underneath me as I tried to get my arm around his neck as he stumbled away from Ray. I didn't see his elbow but I felt it strike the side of my head, knocking me off his back, blotting my vision with stars and filling my ears with a piercing tone.

It was pure instinct that made me lift my legs and kick. He was wiping at his eyes but his guess at where to lunge with the sword would have skewered my left leg to the ground and my boots knocked the weapon from his hand. I rolled over and pushed myself upright.

Renown stumbled back as he got the dirt out of his eyes and I cast my eyes around for something, anything to use but all there was were sticks and I hurled them in desperation, trying to drive him back away from the fallen sword. Ray was kneeling on the ground, clutching her head and the moment Renown could see straight he would be right after me. Right after me. I put my head down and charged.

He was bigger and stronger than me but he still went down as I slammed into him. I rolled away and dived for the blade but it was no longer there.

Now it was Renown's turn to dodge as Ray thrust at him. He wasn't as nimble as Ray and his movements appeared clumsy though Ray's lunge lacked the force of his and now I realised she was as exhausted as I was. There were three of us fighting and only Renown had his strength.

I took hold of another stick and snapped it as Renown dodged around and took hold of her right arm and slammed his knee into it, making her drop the sword as she punched him in the face with her left fist. I went forward as he returned that punch with one of his own and it sounded like he broke her nose. He drew his fist back for another and then bellowed as I drove the jagged end of my stick into his leg.

It didn't penetrate deeply but as I avoided his fist and twisted away and ripped it out, I opened the shallow wound. Renown bellowed again and his face appeared to boil behind the dirt I had encrusted it with. I saw his foot coming at me but I couldn't move fast enough to avoid it and it slammed into the back of my left thigh, numbing my leg and I went down.

I grabbed another handful of soil and threw it in his face and rolled to avoid another kick as he spat out the grit and furiously rubbed his eyes.

He came down beside me as Ray tackled him and I kicked him in the head as he grabbed at my other leg and heaved, pulling me toward him. He rolled, putting Ray underneath him and for a moment we were awkwardly tangled by each other's groins and then Ray squealed and I couldn't see why and I dug my fingernails into his face until he screamed and I felt blood on my fingertips and he released my leg to pry my hand away, seizing my fingers and I screamed as I felt something break. He suddenly released them, screaming again.

I scrambled away and so did Ray. Like me, she had grabbed a stick and stabbed him and whether by accident or design, she had struck him in the same place I had. Even in the dark, I could see her lips and chin darkening while the rest of her paled. She turned suddenly and stumbled away, away into the trees.

Renown's gaze was fixed on me and he picked himself up and took a step that made him growl with agony and then another and another, inexorably coming at me and fighting every instinct in his body that told him to stay down and off his injured leg. The dirt and the blood from the marks I had clawed into his face were mixing and my nerve broke at his implacable advance.

It was a pure adrenaline that made me move swiftly and run back to my starting tree and grab my pack and Renown roared again and I heard him fall as he tried to run as well and his leg betrayed him. A stick smacked my arm and I ran, leaving him behind in the dark.

I didn't run away blindly, I chose my path carefully and sped on and quickly enough I heard other footfalls that tapered away as I approached. Ray stood with a long and sturdy stick in her grip and she didn't relax at the sight of me.

"Come to finish me off?" She asked and I saw she was leaning on the stick.

Behind me, I heard Renown yell again. "Are you mad? You think I'm facing that on my own? Come on." I went to push past her and she swung the branch at me but the strength and speed she had used to avoid Renown's sword thrusts was gone and I only had to raise my hand to catch the swing. "Ray, he's hurt and neither of us can finish him off, not now. I want him dead and I can't do it. Neither can you. Not alone."

She tried to pull the stick from my hand but her nose was still dripping and with every drop she grew weaker. "You trying to make an alliance with me?" She laughed wetly. "Look where that got me."

"Do you want him to kill you?"

Ray found the strength to pull the branch from my grasp. "No."

"Then come on."

I was using someone else to keep me alive. I was definitely a Career now.


	12. Chapter 12

We stopped or more accurately, Ray dropped from exhaustion and now that the adrenaline had worn off, I caught her with difficulty. She was nothing like Sora. Ray was a solid mass of muscles and as I eased her to the ground, I vividly remembered wrestling with Alba.

I had abandoned my sleeping bag though at least I still had my pack. I placed Ray against a tree and sat down close beside her, putting my pack across us. It wasn't much but I felt a bit warmer. I wasn't going to make another fire. Renown wouldn't be after us again tonight, not with his leg but Kayla and M6 were still out there. Ray was unconscious and the fight had drained me of what little strength I had regained.

I fell asleep and not for long either, the daylight woke me. Ray was still asleep and looked terrible. Her nose was black with bruising and blood and her mouth and clothes were decked with it too. She was alive though. Carefully I drew back the shred of her left sleeve to have a look at her. The cut was long and deeper nearer to her elbow. It wasn't discoloured. That was good. I wasn't going to try and look at her legs for the source of her limp.

I inspected my fingers and as I had feared, Renown had broken two of them. My left hand was now pretty much useless and it was a blessing that it was my left. Broken fingers were commonplace in a mill and I set the bones with practiced ease though I had nothing to splint them with. The water had taken a lot out of me and I felt little pain. I didn't feel my hunger much either. I was numb.

It was quiet out there. I had no idea how big the arena had been to start with or how much it had shrunk since the flood but there were only five of us left now. Five of us and two of us were here beneath this tree. Perhaps Kayla was still spying on everyone.

Tyler. That was the name of M6. Kayla, Ray, Renown, Tyler and myself; all that remained. It was almost a completely clear field for Renown now. Tyler hadn't done anything to impress back in the training centre, Kayla couldn't hope to win a fair fight and Ray and I were both beaten down. My side had healed up nicely but my eye was still tender from the fight with Alba and I hadn't properly recovered from the lake yet. I had fresh bruising from fighting with Renown as well, leaving me with the feeling that it was risky touching any part of my body.

Ray woke slowly and then snarled at the sight of me. There was a little more colour in her cheeks though between her arm and her nose, she had lost more than enough blood to be getting on with. I batted her hand down. "Relax."

"Still here then?"

"You saw last night. Neither of us could fight him and he couldn't fight both of us together."

"Need me to protect you then?"

"I need you to distract him."

"Ruthless." She declared.

"I can't kill him on my own."

"And if we do? What then?"

"Then we try and kill each other, like we're supposed to."

"Really? You think you could kill me after we've teamed up? You're not like us; you're a soft little-"

"I killed Sulla. I strangled him with a length of wire. And I killed Alba by stabbing her in the heart." Ray's expression had gone from mocking to almost scared because what I was describing she didn't think I looked capable of. "I know you're thinking about how to kill me right now. But you can't. You're weak. I'm weak. We're both weak. If we want to get strong again-" I had to swallow some rising bile because even though I knew she had killed June for the right reasons, I was still allying with her killer. "We stay together, we kill Renown and then you can try and kill me and I really don't care if you succeed."

We were sat shoulder to shoulder, our noses were almost touching and her brown eyes had a yellow tinge that reminded me of a feral cat. She glared at me for what like several minutes before finally speaking. "You're full of surprises, millboy."

"Well I'm sorry I'm not a ruthless murderous bitch like you."

She grinned, increasing her resemblance to a feral cat. "You think it's murder?"

"You volunteered to be here. We didn't."

"It's the price of rebellion."

I rolled my eyes. I hadn't had enough sleep to deal with this kind of conversation. "Can you walk?"

"If I have to."

"Good. We can't stay here."

"No. We should head to the water."

"You really want to be near the water if it floods again?"

"It won't flood again. They've already had a flood." She was right. The Gamemakers wouldn't repeat the same trick twice. "Do you have any more food?"

"Some. You've got nothing?"

"It was in my pack. Renown's got that. Fiona's too. He won't go hungry."

"Do you know anything about foraging?"

"No."

"We're eating trees then."

She picked up her stick again though she used it as a walking stick and I knew she wasn't going to try anything with it.

In the brief time we had spent together, Sora and I hadn't travelled. I had carried her into the hollow tree and that was it. But this was the first time since I had been in the arena that I had been around someone for a prolonged length of time. The brief time she had been alone before encountering me had been the aberration for her. She hadn't had to cope with loneliness.

Ray had nothing but disgust for pine bark but it was something to put into her stomach. I would give her a biscuit, later, but for now, I used a stone to scrape us a passable meal.

"You burned our supplies." It wasn't an accusation. She had been slow to put the pieces together though.

"Yes."

"Good strategy."

"Thanks."

"It means it's your fault though. What Renown did to your girl."

"No." I had thought of this a long time ago. "What Renown did was Renown."

"True. Asshole." She clutched her left arm.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

"You're lying, aren't you?"

"Of course I'm lying!"

"Just remember what we did to Renown's leg."

"I hope the bastard's crippled."

I hoped so as well. Perhaps there was a chance he was already bleeding to death. If a cannon went off, it would be very awkward for the two of us.

"You're destroyed our food and you killed Sulla to do it. And then you killed Alba. How did you get Alba?"

"I got lucky."

"Makes sense."

"She asked me not to kill her."

"Alba?" Her scepticism dripped from her lips. "Begged for her life?"

"Yes, she did." I shuddered as I recalled her soft 'please' and then the feeling of her dying beneath me.

The knowledge that, whatever passed as a friend for Ray, had died a sad and inglorious death seemed to shake her up quite a bit. Her attitude to the Games was completely alien to me. Alba had seen it from my point of view as she died and now perhaps Ray considered that fighting and dying in the games wasn't an honour; it was simply dying.

We made it to the water and I realised how much I had taken for granted the simple act of walking with an able body. My previous visits to the Cornucopia had been easy and nothing compared to this trek. We sat down against another tree and it was abundantly clear to me that we were done for the day. This little area by the water was as far as we would be ranging.

She was leaning against me and tenderly touching her nose. She winced and then stroked her arm with less of a reaction. Like me, she seemed numb to it all.

"Here." I reached into my pack. "Use it."

She looked at the tin suspiciously and then opened it. "This is medicine. Where did you get it?"

I lifted my jacket. "Alba did this. And after I killed her, they sent me that." It had only been a few days but the Capitol medicine had worked a miracle.

"And you're giving it to me?"

"You don't need all of it. And you're not much use to me if you get an infection and get sick on me."

My ruthless logic appealed to her and she added a neat layer of the oily substance to her arm, leaving plenty left. I wondered what Ellis thought of me sharing this gift with a Career. He probably hated me more than he already had.

"So you're going to use me as a meat shield?" She asked.

"You shield me, I'll shield you."

"I'm not encouraged."

Already I was wondering why the hell I had let this happen. The moment Renown was no longer a problem, I knew she would kill me without hesitation and probably before Renown hit the ground. I knew why… fortune. It had been her good fortune to find me with a fire when she needed it. It had been my poor fortune to have come out of the lake nearby two Careers.

Or perhaps meeting Ray had been the best thing to happen to me after the flood. On my own, I would have been easy meat for anyone. With my spear I had been a threat but without it, I didn't threaten either Career, I didn't know what Tyler was capable of and I wasn't sure about Kayla either.

I wasn't talking to myself now though. I had a psychotic Career to talk to.

"You aren't afraid when I get my strength back I'll snap your neck?"

"Meat shield."

She shrugged. "It was much better when we were too tired to think."

"I'm exhausted. I guess you've spent too many years training to murder to be tired."

"I kill a few people here and win, and me and my family are set for the rest of our lives. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing." I had to admit that from her perspective as a volunteer there wasn't. "But you chose it. I didn't. Eighteen of us didn't choose to be here. None of us were prepared to kill or die. June never wanted to leave her family and now she's dead and they'll remember the way she died for the rest of their lives."

"That's not how it's supposed to be. You fight and you kill. That's it. That's all. Renown… He likes killing. I saw him when he was watching replays. The rest of us came here to win, not to… get off from hurting people."

"Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?"

"We were going to. If the flood hadn't happened… We were both going to gut him and split up."

I found this oddly reassuring but a thought occurred to me, one that reminded me how much an insect I was here. "When did you plan it? Where?"

"Why?"

"Just answer the question."

"In the woods, alone."

"When?"

"The day before the flood."

"You planned to kill Renown, and then there was a flood?"

It came to her slowly and she smiled. "I guess he's the favourite."

"Are you sure you want to be by the water?"

"We're fine. Imagine the speculation about the two of us, teaming up, planning to take on the fearsome and brutal Renown. They want us to fight."

"And they're wondering if we'll kill each other in our sleep."

"They'll be betting on you."

"Probably." I was the weaker after all and the weak didn't fight fair. They all knew it too. "Do you think I would?"

Ray gazed steadily at me and I knew she already had an answer, she wanted to unnerve me. "No. You meant it when you said I could kill you after we kill Renown." She extended a hand. "Allies." She declared. "And I know this doesn't mean anything to you. But it does to me."

"I'll take it." As I took her hand, I felt very much like I was getting friendly with my executioner. However, I already knew she would be a much more professional executioner than the alternative. For that reason alone, I reached into my pack and offered her a biscuit.

"I don't know how much you've got in there." She said as she took it. "But we'll run out before we get our strength back?"

"Probably." If we ate properly, which we hadn't been, we would be out in a couple of days and living off nothing but tree bark and grass. I gave her another biscuit. "But what are our choices?"

"Eat while we can, take the strength we can get and fight while we can. Better than wasting."

With the arena now half-flooded and only five tributes remaining, the Games were drawing to a close. The end was nigh and I doubted that these Games would be permitted to end with one tribute outlasting the rest.

"No fire tonight?"

"No fire tonight." She confirmed. "We won't make it easy."

"Can Renown track?"

"Not that I know. Probably not knowing him. We're okay. We'll just be cold tonight." She shuffled slightly closer to me and then placed my pack between the two of us, covering one thigh each. "I'm thinking about that asshole sleeping snug in a bag and what I'll do to him."

That was one way to stay warm, I thought.

The day wore on and we dozed as night fell. Both of us had slipped away for a few minutes to see to our needs but that was all the energy we could spare. I carved some more pine for us even though I was beginning to feel as if there were splinters on my tongue. It helped settle some of the growls in my stomach though. It would have been better if I had never eaten at the Capitol, I would have faced this much more easily.

The sky played the anthem but there were no new reports today. I was barely awake and Ray glared up with irritation before settling back. One side of me was bitterly cold, the other feeling oddly snug. Snug against a trained killer…

At least I was warm.

I woke to the sound of Ray groaning and she had clearly only just woken herself. The bruising around her nose had lessened but she still looked incredibly rough.

"Hurts?" I asked and it was difficult to sound sympathetic.

She growled in response. She really was a feral cat.

"That needs to be set."

"Set?"

Ray started as I knelt over her and there was no mistaking the primal instinct in her eyes as I put my thumbs on her nose.

Her nose shifted and crunched into place and she seized both my arms and if she had been stronger she would have had me on my back. The primal look disappeared. "Much better… Thanks…"

I extricated my thumbs from her nose and my arms from her hands. "How's the arm?"

She pulled up her sleeve and the medicine had worked the same magic as it had done to my side. She looked very satisfied.

"And the leg?"

"It'll get better."

"What happened anyway?"

"He knocked me down, I landed on a rock… it's just bruised."

"True?"

"Why would I lie?"  
"To seem less weak. You can hide a leg." I held up my useless left hand. "I can't hide this."

"You really don't trust me?"

I shrugged. It wasn't that I didn't trust her; it was the Games that made me paranoid. She had to conceal weaknesses and keep advantages to herself. It was how you survived.

"I don't want to sit around again all day." She declared.

"What else can we do?"

"I don't care if we just walk for a few hours and then sit down again but I'm not sitting here all day."

"Shouldn't we be conserving our energy?"

"For what? For Renown to limp up and find us? We need weapons and we need food. We don't know how to get food but we can make weapons. When he comes at me again with that sword, I don't care if all I have is a pointy stick; I want the pointy stick."

It was a very compelling argument. As it turned out, you couldn't just stroll about the woods and find a stick that would make a good spear. All the wood on the ground was brittle, useless. I resorted to snapping off a low branch that was straight enough but took a lot out of me to retrieve. It was nothing compared to the weapon I had taken from the Cornucopia but as Rey had pointed out, it was better than nothing. She found a stick as well, and the two of us were left walking around with the sharpest stones we could find doing our best to put a point on our measly weapons and I knew she was every bit on edge as I was. We walked about a foot apart and keeping step so we wouldn't present our backs to one another. We hadn't been armed before. One hard thrust and there would only be four tributes left.

It would have to be one hard thrust; I didn't have the energy for a drawn out fight. We were both far too battered for it.

"So you received medicine?" Ray asked suddenly.

"Yeah…"

"Because you killed Sulla and Alba and suddenly looked like a good bet. What about now? How do you look now? Are you going to get sent some food?"

"Hungry then?"

"And you aren't?"

"I'm used to it." It was a stupid thing to say but it was true.

"There's five of us left, right? Who would you put your money on?"

"I don't have any money." But I thought about it. Kayla was young and small and her best strategy was to hide but eventually the Gamemakers would force her into a confrontation and she didn't stand much of a chance against me or Tyler and certainly not Ray or Renown. Tyler had made no impression on me in training and his score was low. The contest came down between me, Ray and Renown. But as we were together, that confused things. Alliances weren't made when there were this few of us left. No one would send anything to me if they thought it would end up in Ray's hands, or vice versa. They would all be waiting for us to kill each other and make the waters less murky. "Renown's going to get gifts."

"He's probably already gotten medicine for his wounds. Food too."

"Won't be much." At this stage, the prices would be vicious.

"More than us."

I nodded. "They'll need food too. The others."

"You did a great job destroying the supplies."

"Yes, I did." If I killed her, my supplies would last a few more days and perhaps I would receive some more from Ellis. All I had to do was kill Ray.

"We need to kill Renown. " She said, as if she had read my thoughts. "Tomorrow." She nodded and then gripped her spear tightly. "Tomorrow we killed him."

"How do we find him?"

"He's not imaginative. He'll be right where we left him, healing up. He doesn't need to hide, he wants to be found. Anyone he finds, he kills. Unless you think the little one could bash his skull in with a rock."

"Probably not."

"So what do you want to do now?"

"I want to eat, so I guess I'll be eating more tree bark."

Her tone was particularly bitter and I contributed a biscuit to her pathetic meal to keep her placated. It was not an easy night.


	13. Chapter 13

Compared to being woken by a flood, the booming voice was nowhere near as bad. I caught my broken fingers however as I jumped and growled in frustration as they announced a feast would take place at the Cornucopia in two hours.

"They must be getting bored." I said.

"Or they know we're all hungry." Ray replied. She looked pissed off though whether it was hunger or being woken, I didn't know. "I said we'd kill Renown today. So we will."

"We might not make it."

Ray used her spear to jump it. "We'll fucking make it! We'll get there and I'll put this through his heart. Now get up."

I wasn't going to argue. Right now was the most I had ever trusted her as she had thoughts only for Renown and the unspeakable ways she wanted to kill him. Her limp was still there but my medicine had worked its magic on her arm. We were still covered in bruises though and I had my broken fingers. We would have looked intimidating to Kayla and Tyler but not to Renown and his sword.

"Relax." I said.

"To hell with that. I wanted to be coursing with adrenaline when we get there."

The weary girl I had met after dragging myself out of the lake was gone and the Career volunteer was back. At home, killing a fellow District tribute would get you ostracised. For Careers, they knew it was virtually inevitable that they would have to face each other. There was nothing holding her back and her rage at his sudden betrayal was nothing but hypocrisy considering she had been planning to murder him with Fiona.

It was quiet. Very quiet. If it wasn't for us, it would have been completely silent. Ray had no worries about being heard. She crashed along, rustling bushes and snapping branches underfoot, frightening birds out of the trees. If there were any dangerous animals out there, they would have any trouble finding us. Flooding aside, this arena was tame. It hadn't needed to be anything else; we had provided plenty of slaughter.

"If I end up killing you… Thanks. For everything." Ray suddenly said.

"What?"

"Thank you for not trying to kill me that first night. Thank you for helping me with Renown that night rather than running away and leaving us to it. Thank you for the medicine. And thank you for the food."

My first thought was that she was trying to score points with the audience but the way she spoke, casually, and with considerable awkwardness… She was being sincere. "You're a strange person, Ray."

"I don't like debts." She grunted, unable to look at me. "And if you kill me, that wouldn't be so bad. You killed Sulla and Alba so I'll be remembered. If you don't win… you should be memorable. There can't be anything worse than being forgotten. Even death."

"Death is inevitable." I said.

Ray looked at me. "You believe that?"

"We all die. One way or another… You chose to risk dying here. The odds were against me. If I die here, I guess that's better than dying in some mill accident or just starving… At least this is…"

"Exciting?" She offered.

"Perhaps. For me. But for June? For Sora… This was a nightmare."

"Sora?"

"District 8. Alba killed her. I was with her when she died, after I killed Alba… She didn't belong here."

"But we do. You've proved it. I've proved it."

I was not going to argue with the fact that I had proven to be an able killer. "We shouldn't be forced to come here."

"If you hadn't been forced to come here, you'd never have known what you could do."

"I think I could have lived with not knowing I could strangle someone to death."

"We are what we are."

"You scare me."

"Good. That'll help me later." She smiled at her own brutal joke.

We arrived at the Cornucopia just as the table rose out of the ground. Some feasts consisted of banquet platters, full meals laid out on dishes while others might have been a single weapon that could change the balance of power entirely if the right person got hold of it.

Today, at midday I realised, there were five packs. Five packs for five tributes. There had to be food inside. It was what we all needed.

Tyler suddenly ran out of the Cornucopia, tearing across the grass and snatching one of the packs before either of us could react.

"Smart bastard." Ray muttered.

I had to agree. He had put himself in the best position and left the way clear for the rest of us. He would be in the woods in moments and safe again.

"Let him go."

"I wasn't planning on chasing him." I watched him run, slipping the pack over his shoulders and then gushing crimson as something silver flashed in the light. "Fuck!"

Renown came out from behind a tree that Tyler had run to with the worst luck in the world. Even though his throat was open, Renown still felt the need to stab him in the gut, twice.

"You're mine now, asshole!" Ray was already running, her limp throwing her a little off-balance but she compensated with sheer rage. I took after her but she wasn't heading for Renown but for the table. So was Renown. He charged with his bloody sword held low as cannon sounded to tell the world that Tyler was gone. It was a straight up race now and they both had injured legs, I did not.

Neither did little Kayla. I saw her appear on the edge of my vision and she was faster than the three of us, clearly better fed than any of us and completely unhurt. She was completely unarmed too, unencumbered.

She caught my eye just as she reached the table and I saw immediately. Kayla had shadowed me and the others, stayed hidden the whole time. Hiding had kept her alive. Hiding could continue to keep her alive. These packs were her ticket home.

She seized all four.

Ray and Renown both screamed with rage as the little girl took off, the weight of the packs slowing her down. Renown had already slowed and I saw him glance around and realised that Tyler still wore one of the five. He glanced at Ray and then turned and ran back. I was running for Kayla and I heard Ray scream with frustration and I didn't know if she wanted help to go after Renown or because we had been outsmarted and wrong footed by both Tyler and Kayla.

The distance between me and Kayla shrank to just a few feet and the enormity of the need to stab her in the back overwhelmed me suddenly. I couldn't do that. Not Kayla. Not in the back. If I tackled her… Ray could do the dirty work…

Kayla hurled a pack and it struck me in the face hard. Something inside was metallic. Apparently Kayla's skill was throwing. I stumbled back and Kayla fled with the remaining three.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" Ray skidded up beside me and glared after Kayla.

"Don't."

"You think I could catch the little rat on an empty stomach?!" Ray snarled at me and I tensed and began to raise my spear. "Don't!" She snapped. "Not yet." She turned and looked back to where Tyler's body was being recovered. Renown was gone. Kayla was gone. The Gamemakers had gotten their kill out of their feast and everyone was resupplied. Some more than others. Ray gazed at the scorched Cornucopia. "Let's eat."

It was a roof over our heads, despite the ashes, blackened metal and plastic gunk. With our spears, it was also easily defended. Spears we both pointedly put down as we opened the pack.

The metallic object was a cylinder of soup, hot soup. We put it aside and took out a couple of packets of dried meat, along with bags of fresh rolls and apples and a tub of rice.

It was enough food for a tribute to survive on for a week.

Ray unscrewed the lid of the cylinder and filled it. The sight of the steam coming off it made my stomach growl loud enough for her to hear it. She giggled and I felt my skin creep at this unnatural sound. She cautiously sipped from the lid and flinched as the hot liquid entered her mouth but then her eyes rolled up with delight. "Chicken soup." She purred and my skin crawled again.

I helped myself to some of the rice because it was the only other part of this meal I hadn't eaten since entering the arena. It was rice, egg-fried, delicious. I only had a mouthful because after eating pinewood for days I didn't trust my stomach not to recoil.

Ray finished her soup and offered me the lid. She also had a mouthful of rice and made that same purring sound. Going hungry was obviously much worse for her, and perhaps she was used to good food where she came from.

It wasn't much of a meal, a cup of soup and a mouthful of rice, all things considered. But it was a meal. The soup did something impossible; it made me feel better.

"This is really wrong."

I looked up at Ray and all trace of her giggle and purr was gone. Instead she looked revolted.

"Think about killing Renown." I said. "This won't feel so revolting."

"I'm sat here having a nice meal with you." Now she was the one with creeping skin. "We've eaten, we should find the girl."

"Kayla? What about Renown?"

"Renown doesn't have my pack of food."

"Kayla-"

"Kayla took those packs because she knows what she's doing! She knows we're together to get Renown. She knows we're all dangerous. She knows that the best way to finish us is to leave us hungry and fighting each other! She took those packs so she can hide somewhere, eat well and leave us to wither away! That is a smart kid. That is a dead kid!"

"We're not going after her."

"You don't have to kill her."

"Renown's limping. We can catch him. We can kill him."

"And then what? You leave me to kill Kayla and then wait to kill me?"

"So you want to kill Kayla, then Renown and then… We stand over his body, say good luck-"

"You don't want Renown to kill you, I don't want Renown to kill me. So we kill him together. If we have to track down a kid who took our supplies first, fuck it! If we're the final two… That's the way it is."

"It's not right."

"Because she's two years younger than you? Because she's a girl?"

"It doesn't feel…" I shrugged helplessly.

"So you'll only kill people from Districts 1 and 2. How… provincial of you."

I had an awful moment of clarity as I realised that with Kayla dead there would only be brute force tributes left. With only myself, Ray and Renown left, the Games would soon be over.

No more of these awkward, nerve-grating nights. No more arguments with this bloodthirsty maniac.

"Fine." I finally said.

"Not today. Should be today… but I can't do it. Not after that run." She shook her head and then snarled at herself, furious with her own weakness. It was good to hear she was exhausted though as I was completely worn out too. "Today we eat. We eat and we rest and tomorrow, we kill your little Kayla."

"You're not helping."

"I'm here to kill you."

"Good point." I was glad our spears were on the ground because otherwise I might have done something stupid. "No weapons." I said. "Not even cutlery."

"There's two of us and one of him. It's more sporting if he has a real weapon and we don't."

Ray understood the Games far too well I thought.

"And I don't think Kayla has a single weapon, so it's definitely entertaining."

"You've watched every single Games, haven't you?"

"Many times." She admitted far too freely. "You can learn a lot. Be afraid of animals." She twitched several times. "Very afraid."

She wasn't wrong. Whenever mutts made an appearance in the Games, they always left an indelible stain on your mind.

"You're thinking. Stop that. You're making me paranoid."

Ray was clearly making a joke. "Are you insane?" I asked.

"This is weird, and wrong. I'm trying to get over it."

"Maybe we should just go our own ways."

"No. I need you. I might feel like you're going to stab me in the back but I know you won't."

"I wouldn't stab you in the back."

"You killed Sulla from behind and stabbed Alba in the heart. Put them together."

"That was different."

"How?"

"I know you. If I kill you, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed."

"If." She said and smiled grimly. "I like that."

"You would."

Perhaps in response to the fact we had all benefited from the feast today, as the light faded the temperature dropped radically. I watched my breath mist in front of me as I tucked my hands into my sleeves. We weren't going to risk a fire, not now. Instead we sat back in the ashes of the Cornucopia and Ray used her new pack like I did as a crude blanket. Perhaps Renown was using my sleeping bag… Perhaps he had one of his own from the Careers supplies. Maybe he had both. Imagining him warm made me think about breaking his legs and that helped warm me up.

"I'm glad it wasn't snow. So glad." Ray murmured.

"It might have been nice, nothing but cold to help you slip away…"

"Do you even care if I kill you?"

"I don't have anything to go back to. I might hate the mills but what would I do without them? Who would I be?"

"You tell me, millboy." It might not have been possible but I swore I heard her eyes roll in the darkness. "You know people like you make very boring Games."

"If you want entertainment, they should all be volunteers like you."

"I think that would be better. It's not satisfying to gut a twelve year old."

"You did?"

"Girl from Six. First day. Killed her instantly. I didn't eviscerate her the way Renown took the boy from Twelve. And Alba took the girl from Twelve. Good throw."

"I saw that. And I saw Renown kill the boy from Eight. He's racked up a lot of kills."

"Yeah… Imagine if they were all like us. All Careers as you call us. That would be a contest." The relish of this idea was clear in her voice. "Imagine if they took previous Victors."

"That would cruel."

"For people like you. Not for us."

"If you made it out of here, you'd want to come back."

"You try and tell me if you've ever felt more alive than before you came here."

"I'm not like other people."

The sound of her eyes rolling bothered me again. "I'm this close to risking a fire."

"I don't want to fight Renown in the dark again."

"No. That wasn't fun. I think they want us to fight in the light. Better footage that way."

"Go to sleep, Ray." I didn't need to hear how the Capitol would prefer a clearer shot of my bloody demise.

"Are you going to keep watch?"

"One of us has to."

"Makes sense."

Ray astonished me by actually going to sleep and either she believed me when I said I would only kill her when she was facing me or she actually did trust me. I knew I wouldn't have trusted her to be awake while I slept as easily.

Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was the thought that Renown was on the prowl. Perhaps I was afraid of falling asleep and having Ray discover I had slept on watch. Whatever it was I stayed awake. I did what she had told me, I avoided thinking. I had no idea what kept me going through the night. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. All I could hear was Ray breathing.

Dawn finally rolled around and Ray came awake blearily. "You actually stayed awake all night?"

"All quiet."

"Good job." She said and I was confident that we were both unsettled by her words. "You sleep now." She stood up and stretched. "I need to find a bush. But get some rest. We've got to finish off District 3 today."

"I'm sure that'll give me pleasant dreams."

I settled back and dozed. I heard her come back and felt her settle beside me. I drifted in and out, too tired to stay awake and too paranoid to completely drift away. If she had killed me though, I wouldn't have blamed her. It was all part of the Games.


End file.
